Eye was amazed.

T had an eye exam today. In Illinois, all kids have to have an eye exam within a year of starting kindergarten. Wait, I think that's misleading. The deadline is October 15th, and they have to have had an eye exam between last October 15th and this October 15th. Because if we had until the end of the kindergarten year, I guarantee you we'd be eye doctoring it up in May. Cause, you know, that's how we roll.

I finally made an appointment off base for T's eye exam. T is skittish about any kind of medical visit. So I didn't tell him he had an appointment until he got home after school, which is also when we needed to leave for the appointment.


He was not happy. But, in stunning evidence of progress, he listened to me explain what would happen during the visit and accepted what I said. He never lost control, even though he really didn't want to go. We got to the appointment and I had had to fill out a bunch of paperwork. On the bright side, the lady at the front desk seems to think Tricare will cover the actual eye exam. One can only hope.

S, who really needed a nap but refused to take one at a reasonable hour, was all over the place. T was sitting quietly and a little timidly in a chair in the waiting area. I'd love to have been able to reassure him, but I was too busy chasing S down so that she didn't pull all the glasses off the racks and fog up the mirrors with her breath so she could draw on them. Good times.

Digital photography of the back of the eye is the new current trend, and there were pictures of eyes up on posters that showed certain (and I'm assuming fairly common) problems...glaucoma, diabetes, high blood pressure, macular degeneration, etc. The kids keep asking me what this picture means and that picture means. I'm reading the descriptions and trying to explain it all, but when S starts her seventh round of "what is dis?" I'm pretty much done. Especially since I'm trying to fill out paperwork.

Sigh.

The assistant comes to get T and I tell her he's a little nervous, at which point she switches into awesome mode and sets his mind at ease. He does everything she tells him the first time she asks, we do the digital photograph of the back of his eye, and then we go to the exam room.

Again, T does remarkably well. He reads the letters off the eye chart like a pro and is fine with all the repetition he has to do.

Then the optometrist comes in and is just wonderful with T. He does all kinds of tests - color blindness, depth perception, and other things I know he told me but I don't remember. It was pretty awesome to watch, actually. And S was so fascinated with the process that she forgot to be obnoxious. (woot!)

And then we were done. T's vision is great, no problems and he doesn't need glasses. He was a little disappointed to hear that and S was very disappointed to hear it. I? I was grateful. As we were leaving and I was paying for the back of the eye photograph, I was delighted to learn that they offer a 30% military discount. So I ordered some contacts for me since my prescription expires in a few months. When it's my turn for an eye exam, I'm definitely going back there. The staff was great, the prices were reasonable, and anyone that can have the effect on my kids (ie getting them so interested in something that they behave) is gold to me.