Went to have my annual oncology exam for my left eye. Discovered about 6 years ago, it seems I’ve had a mole on the back of the inside of my left eye. This mole, also known as a “nevus” was regularly measured by my ophthalmologist each year. In 2012, he thought it looked like the mole had grown. So he sent me to an ocular oncologist at the Havener Eye Institute of The Ohio State University Medical Center.
The drill there was to take pictures of the nevus, then measure it by ultrasound. The ultrasound requires placing the transmitter directly in contact with the eye and moving it around across the eye. Sounds icky, doesn’t it?
In 2012, the report was that all was well – no blood vessels in the nevus, it was very thin, and it really hadn’t grown. It was due to measuring error at the regular doctor.
Well that part of this year’s exam went fine again and I was right on my planned schedule to be out of there in 1:20 minutes. Then the doctor said, “I noticed in the pictures that some blood vessels look like they may be leaking.” Now this is called diabetic retinopathy and is what leads to blindness when untreated. I had it in my right eye in 2006, so the words were familiar. “If you have the time,” she continued, “I’d like for you to have another test done.” This test involves injecting dye and taking a series of pictures of the eye to see if any of the dye is leaking from the suspected blood vessels.
“How long will it take?”, I asked. The response? “Oh, about 30 minutes.”
Like P.T. Barnum’s famous sucker, I gave the go ahead for the procedure, knowing that I could cut my lunchtime short in order to get to work on time.
Of course, since none of this extra test was on anyone’s schedule, it took 30 minutes to get worked back into the photo lab’s schedule then over an hour until I could squeeze into the Dr.’s rotation. Finally, she came in. She told me everything looked fine and she’d see me in a year. In and out in 1 minute flat.
Moral of the story – when the Doctor says, “It will only take …”, DON”T BELIEVE THEM!!!!
In the end, I took the rest of the day off, because with the delay I would have only been there 2 hours anyway. But it would have been a much more relaxed day if I’d known that beforehand.
I am, despite all of the extra waiting, glad I had it done. A good report and it saved me another trip downtown! Win/win – you can’t beat that!