learned from my eye doctor

[cellio]

Another thing I learned today: those vision tests where you read letters off a chart on the wall? Put a great big "SWAG" around any results you get from that. Lighting in the room, brightness of the bulb in the projector, focus, and a bunch of other factors can affect your score -- and these all vary from one exam room to another. Bugger! Here I thought it meant something when I did, or didn't, get the same results on successive visits!

Oh, and some letters are harder than others -- a fact I have noted before -- and sometimes the person administering the test will fudge your score based on that. So if you got the "Q" (which looks an awful lot like an "O") that might count for more than correctly getting the "L" (which is pretty unambiguous). Or not. It depends on the technician, or maybe on the phase of the moon. This, at least, is something where any given practice could set policies; I'll have to ask about that.

(Why yes, I do read my chart while waiting for the doctor. I think this is perfectly appropriate.)

Comments

[cellio]

I remember having to repeatedly explain to one person that for a valid test, he had to either change charts or do the eyes in the order I said -- because if I read the chart with the better eye I would remember that data long enough to not be sure if I was really seeing it with the weaker eye.