This article has been written in such a way that the casual reader can understand it as well as the experienced eye care practitioner

I will think of more and expand this list as they come up. Readers are welcome to submit their stories to me via email for inclusion as well.

- I ask them which lens is better, "one or two" and they decide to simply read the chart for unknown reasons.
- I give them the paddle and say cover your left eye and they cover the right
- I give them the paddle and I say cover your left eye and they do, and they close the right eye at the same time and wonder why they can't see anything.
- I tell them both choices are blurry, but to choose the less blurry lens and they say, "Doc, its blurry".
-I put dilating drops in their eyes, tell them to sit in the waiting room for about 15 minutes while their pupils dilate..and they go to the waiting room, and they keep going out to their car, and they leave before I recheck them.

Sometimes if a patient reverses left and right I will say, take both of your hands and put them in front of you, and make an "L" with your pointer and your thumb...good...now, which one is the correct "L"? That's your left hand..."

They come back for their one week contact lens followup, to check the fit, comfort, and vision, but they neglect to wear their contact lenses to the visit. When asked why they didn't wear their contact lenses to their contact lens followup visit they say they didn't know they were supposed to.

At the end of the exam, when I have their new prescription in the the instrument that flips the lenses I usually ask them to compare their present eyeglass vision to whats in the instrument.

So I have them look at the chart through the refractor, then I pull it away and say, "now put your glasses on, and tell me which is clearer". The expected response is, either its much clearer in the instrument, or a little better, or the same (if there hasnt been much of a change).

Sometimes a patient will say "oh, my glasses are much clearer!". And I say, "huh? The instrument should be the same or better, since it reflects your current situation, which we just tested." Then they say, "oh, I mean my glasses are clearer than having nothing in front of me at all!" 

I am examining this woman, she's looking through the lens flipping machine. I finish the left eye, close it off and go to the right. She keeps telling me she can't see anything.

I finally peer in, and see that her eye is closed behind the instrument.

I am positioning a patient behind a machine that has a chin rest and a forehead bar. I say, "put your chin in the chinrest and your head against the bar". They put their forehead on the chinrest. Sometimes I just sit there and stare at them in disbelief before I tell them to please pick their head up because that is not what I meant. This happens periodically.

Once in a while when a patient is asked to sit on the stool, they sit down but lose their balance because they don't plant their butts right in the middle and they are too far back. So they start to flail their arms as they start to fall backwards. It's like slow motion..as they teeter on the edge of balance vs falling backwards... That stool has since been replaced with a chair with arms.

Patients that don't bring their glasses with them to their eye exam. Um..hello? By measuring your prior glasses, I can tell the patient if there has been a significant change in their prescription, perhaps I will adjust the new prescription so that it won't be too big a change from what they had before, and I can predict what may happen with their vision going forward based on the changes that have occurred since their last eye examination. You would think people would know that.

I say to the patient, tell me which is better, "ONE or TWO". So I flip it, and they say "that's good". And I say, well, I'm glad that it's "good" but I NEED TO KNOW the better choice, ONE OR TWO? I flip it again, and they say, that's ok but its further away...

Sometimes we go back and forth like that for a few minutes..then I pull the refractor away, and I say to them.."look, I need to go in a certain direction, and that path is determined by which one is clearer. Your responses are not directing me anywhere because you are being vague and not picking an answer. I need you to simply answer with a number. Got it?" And often they will say "yes", so I will flip the machine back, and say which is better now, "one or two"..more often than not they will say.."they are both pretty good".

Then there's the patient who wears glasses all the time, or at least for all distance...at the conclusion of the exam, I say, "ok, you need new glasses, and since you have no sunglasses, I recommend those, for driving, and to protect your eyes from the harmful UV rays of the sun"..and they will invariably say, "do they need to be prescription"...um...yes they do...

I hand them the "occluder". It's a paddle, with a curved round cup at one end to cover the eye, attached to a long handle. I tell them to "cover" one eye. As I said earlier, sometimes they cover one eye and close the other and wonder why they can't see anything. This last patient did something that I have seen a handful of times and it makes me wonder how she has enough brains to pour a bowl of cereal...She takes the occluder and instead of holding it vertically, she holds it horizontally, so the handle is going across one eye and the cupped circle is over the other, which of course also prevents her from seeing anything.

During the visual field test, one eye is covered by a plastic eye patch, secured with an elastic band. After the first eye is done, I slide the patch over to the other eye, and test that eye. This guy had removed the patch by the time I got back to the instrument, and I said, "lets patch the other eye". So he reaches for a different patch that is sitting near the instrument and says "is this the one for the left eye".

The center of the retina, where the fine visual acuity occurs, along with the color vision, where the cone photo receptors are concentrated, is called the "macula". Many patients are familiar with the term "macular degeneration" because, unfortunately, lots of older folks get this condition and it often results in severe vision loss if not blindness.

So this patient says..."A friend of mine has maculate conception".

I half expected her to say she gave birth to a baby out of her eye socket...

This next patient wears glasses for nearsightedness. That means his distance vision is blurred. I know that when I ask him to read the chart, that it will be blurry. I am simply measuring his uncorrected vision. So I keep going to larger and larger letters, finally he can read some of them, but at the end of each line that he reads he says "but its still blurry doc"...um...I know that its blurry, just because you are reading larger letters doesn't change the fact that your distance vision is blurred when you arent wearing your glasses...

This old fellow tells me that he doesn't like to wear his distance glasses because he sees better without them, and he always has, "since the day he got them" from me, two years ago. But he "puts them on to drive because his license says he has to". So I figure, ok, either the glasses were made wrong (it happens), or his vision changed and he says it was since he got them but it was really at a later date.

I examine his eyes, and the prescription is pretty much the same as what I found 2 years ago. So now it seems like the glasses were made wrong. I read the lenses and I find them to be a totally different Rx then what he requires. I check the eyeglass order which is kept on the computer, from the prior visit, and the frame isn't even the same as the one he ordered. Different frame, different lenses...upon examining the frame more closely its determined to be a woman's frame.

I look up the wife's Rx on a hunch, and long story short, they're her glasses. Ok, so then what glasses are SHE wearing? She says "oh they're in the car, I never wear them". She goes and gets them, and there in the case are a brand new pair of never worn glasses. I hand them to the guy, he puts them on and says "These are great!".

Then there are the patients who, when taking the visual field test...in between eyes, they put down the "patient response button" either because they are waiting for me to come back and they don't feel like holding it, or they put it down when I ask them to please put the patch on their other eye. I say "are you ready" (for the second eye to be tested). They lean back into the machine and they say "yes". I say, well you ought to pick up the button otherwise you won't be able to press it when you see the lights blinking. They say "oh yeah".

I was just examining a "not so bright" woman, and I was getting a bit impatient. It didn't help when she answered a question with "it's clear but I can't read it". Um..If it's clear, you should be able to freaking read it!

As opposed to..if you can't read it it's probably not very clear...