Yesterday morning when I awoke, after staying up until 2:30 AM
writing an e-mail to a friend, I thought my Saturday activities would be
consigned to such home bound chores as laundry, bleaching my
dehumidifiers, and preparing my window air conditioner for winter
storage. Instead, I ended up taking my daughter to the eye doctor for
an emergency check up.
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| Eye diagram showing ciliary muscles | |
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On Friday evening, Katherine the
Great informed me that she had been experiencing double vision and
blurriness for almost a week. "I thought it would clear up by itself,"
she said. Well, it didn't, prompting the aforementioned visit. After a
very thorough examination, the diagnosis was a spasm of accommodation.
Her eye muscles essentially locked themselves into a nearsighted focus
due to overuse. She had been working on her computer, reading a lot for
a literature class...and playing a video game on her iPhone a bit too
much. Prescription: muscle relaxant eye drops (one dose only), rest,
and dark glasses to protect her eyes while dilated (a side effect of the
eye drops). In addition, she needs to be much more judicious about
taking short breaks when doing close work, like studying, writing on her
laptop, or playing a video game (which she really doesn't do all that
often, all current evidence to the contrary).
The culprit in this case was an old diversion called
Shining Force
(1992). My daughter and her best friend discovered it when they were
much younger and were playing it for nostalgia reasons. Thankfully, his
eyes are fine. He feel terrible, though, that hers reacted badly to
their little excursion down memory lane. Fortunately, Katherine the
Great and her vision will be fine. She just needs to be a bit smarter
about her technology use.
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