No Diabetes In There

Yesterday was the dreaded eye doctor day. Dreaded for several reasons:

   -Making time for any appointment is a challenge with the busy high school schedule.

   -Most of the homework had to be finished prior to the appointment since she expected to be blurry afterwards.

   -While we truly appreciate the thorough exam and attention to detail we receive at this office, we've learned that an appointment there is an hour and a half commitment.

   -And, of course, the diabetes what-ifs.

The plus, in addition to liking this doctor, is that the office is less than a mile from home. So a few minutes before five we hopped in the car with the last of the homework in hand. We arrived, signed in, and took our seats in the waiting room. After half an hour of reading for history class and watching a series of increasingly unsettling segments on the 5:00 news (Car crash! Bomb scare! Everything could kill you!) we were ushered into the exam room.

The doctor started with the basic vision tests, which came out about the same as last time. My daughter has 20/20 vision in one eye, which she apparently uses to compensate for astigmatism in the other. No glasses yet but probably some day. Then there were the eye drops- which she hates but which she took like a champ.

Next up was the visual field test. Our doc usually gives this once, as a baseline in kids. But because having diabetes isn't enough of an eyeball challenge, my kid also has an 'it's probably nothing but we're going to keep an eye on it' issue going on with her optic nerves. So into the dark room she went to squeeze a clicker every time she saw a light flash in a machine. She did great, just like last time, so we put this concern off for another year.

Round three involved the actual looking into the eye part. The part when the fingers get crossed and the breath gets held. The doctor used a couple of different instruments to look into the eye herself and, after that, took the retinal photograph. She then pronounced,

"They look great- perfect. There's no diabetes in there."

Which is kind of a peculiar way to put it, but the exact words don't matter. My kid, despite still being a kid, has had diabetes for 14 years. That starts to get into the potential collateral damage timeframe.

So far so good. All the ophthalmologist had left to say was, "See you next year."