The eyes have it!

This morning, after having been in denial for at least a year, I finally saw my optometrist and had an eye examination. They have a new machine that takes a photograph of the retina and sends it to the doctor’s computer so he can examine it. An area about as big as a dime ends up covering the entire screen of his laptop. After the examination, wherein we determined that I need my correction strengthened for distance and I’m going to have to start wearing reading glasses, although very weak ones, he showed me the pictures of the insides of my eyeballs.

They were so incredibly cool. The part where the optic nerve comes out is a nice bright white and all the blood vessels radiate from there as well. My veins are rather straightforward, but the arteries meander all over the place. He commented on this, so I guess that this is unusual. They were very squiggly in the photos. The macula, where the rods are located, is just a darker spot on the retina, and everything looked like it was in good shape. My blood pressure is low, but in patients with hypertension, the arteries passing over the veins can cause a bit of a squeeze on the blood vessels. It was very cool. When I mentioned my meandering arteries to Little Princess, she surmised that this was a good thing, that there was more distribution of oxygen to my eyes this way. I like that explanation.

Our friends the Argentinian composer and his wife (the ones who broke the bed last time) arrived just after 5 p.m. and I served them bean and barley soup, freshly baked dark rye bread and a tossed salad. He was playing in a concert celebrating 100 years of music at McGiII, including one of his own pieces, and they are staying over in our guest room on our new bed. The concert went well, and instead of going out afterwards, we came home and I cooked up a pizza (I always keep a supply in the freezer) and we stayed up talking.

Now I must go to bed, as my eyes don’t want to stay open another minute.

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