Let me preface this by saying I am ardent supporter of mask-wearing.

Now let me also say that these masks are uncomfortable. Sometimes they are too tight. Sometimes they are too loose. Sometimes they ride up. Or down. They pull on my ears. And don’t get me started on how much I sweat underneath them. It’s like a constant rainforest from my upper lip to my chin. (Which actually makes wearing the mask convenient because it then doubles as a little hanky I end up using to wipe off the sweat). When I am wearing a mask, I feel like a can’t talk, breathe, or hear what anyone is saying.

A couple of weeks ago I was due for my yearly eye exam. In case you have never read one of my blogs before, you should know I have terrible eyesight. I have had glasses since I was 8 and then switched to contacts at 13. I am nearsighted and haven’t been able to see far away up until about two or three years ago when suddenly I couldn’t see close-up either. You would think that this phenomenon would cause my eyesight to even out and eventually my eyes would be back to 20/20, but no. It just means that now I can’t see close up OR far away.

Since the eye doctor that I had been seeing for years just retired, I seized the opportunity to move to a clinic closer to home. I did not think this would be an issue since I have had the same prescription for years and have been wearing the same brand and type of contacts forever. The new doctor would merely give me a routine checkup and hand over my standard prescription.

Side note: This seems like a good time to tell you that if you are thinking about getting your eyes checked, stop and ask yourself if you can suffer through with the same glasses or contacts for the next six months or year or however long this pandemic lasts. If the answer is yes, then wait. If the answer is no, wait anyway.

I walk up to the clinic and I am greeted at the door by a 15-year-old boy with a thermometer that I think must be the receptionist’s or doctor’s son who was bribed to be there for the summer or maybe he is getting paid minimum wage I don’t know. Before he lets me in, he checks my temperature with the little gadget that gets close to my forehead but not really. I mean, either we have come a LONG way with technology or this thing is just for show, because I don’t understand how something one inch from my body can tell my internal temperature when it seems like just yesterday I needed to stick a glass tube of mercury under my tongue. I mean, how have we gone from pushing something up our baby’s butts to a hovercraft on our forehead? How accurate can this method be? I’m 51 and pretty much always hot and plus it’s 95 degrees out but with the humidity feels more like 101 so how do I know that those factors aren’t affecting my internal temperature and by the way did I mention under my mask I have droplets of sweat running down my chin?

As Opie checks me, I worry I will register at 104 degrees and be sent directly to the hospital where they will discover it was a false alarm and that I in fact do not have Covid but instead diagnosis me with “post-menopausal-hot-flash” syndrome.

Luckily, I am approved to go inside. I check in with the receptionist who tells me to sign in. I take the pen from the “clean” container and sign in and place it in the “dirty” container. This gives me a false sense of confidence so I try not to think about the fact that I just opened the door using the handle everyone else did and also rested my hands on the counter everyone else did. The receptionist is wearing a mask and there is a Plexiglas divider between us so everything she says is muffled and I think she tells me to take a seat but as far as I know she could have said you are the 100th patient and you win a trip to Mexico but that’s a long shot so I sit down in the waiting area in a chair and wonder if I am in a “clean” chair or a “dirty” chair as it has no label.

Finally, it is time for the doctor to see me. We go through the usual pleasantries and information gathering and then it’s time to take the exam. At this point I realize with alarm that once the machine is pushed up to my eyes, because of the mask I am wearing, my breathing is causing the lens I am supposed to look through to immediately fog up.

Now let’s face it, the outcome of this exam is going to decide whether or not I graduate to old-lady bifocals, so I can’t risk any mistakes on my vision test today. And right now, my face is too close to the machine, my mask is too close to my face, and with each breath I take, the letters are getting more and more blurry.

“F-Z-D-P…” I read the next line down. I squint even more. One more line down. I stumble through it. There is only one line left and things are really hazy by now. At this point, it’s like I just opened the dishwasher after a steaming hot cycle while wearing my glasses. I hate to exaggerate and say I was in a full-blown panic, but I WAS IN A FULL-BLOWN PANIC.

Finally, I admit to the doctor that the lens is just too foggy because of the mask. “That happens,” she says, “I can wipe it off if you need.” I need. She wipes the lenses. But every time I breathe out it happens again.

“Which looks better, one, or two?”

“Wipe please.”

“One or Two?:

“Wipe please.”

“One or Two?”

“Wipe please.”

Dear Lord, I can’t ask her to wipe it after every time she rotates that lens. I know this drill all too well. We are going to be doing this lens switcheroo another 8 or 9 times.

By now I am having an out-of-body experience, so I make the ridiculous decision to just hold my breath for the rest of the exam. I mean, why not limit even MORE oxygen to my brain? Which would have been a good idea if not for the fact that it’s nearly impossible to hold your breath and talk at the same time. And so when the next question comes, I croak out “ONE?” while in complete ophthalmological hysteria.

At this point I am positive I am giving all the wrong answers and also I might pass out from not breathing and l am pretty sure my prescription is going to come back wrong and I will get my contacts and I won’t be able to see out of them and in the meantime “One or Two?” is done but now I need to look for the hot air balloon and everything is a blurry mess and what do you mean YOU WANT TO DILATE MY EYES TOO?

Finally, it is over.

“Your prescription stayed the same,” she says and smiles. “Did you know they make bifocal contacts?”