Last September, I took my mother to her cataract surgeries.

“It was time and normal for her age,” her eye doctor said.

This past July, my husband drove me to mine– twenty years, too early.

“I see in your profile that you use Flonase?” Doctor Dalton Falor of Swartz Eye Care noticed in April of 2026. “How many times do you use it daily?” He asked.

“Twice,” I said.

This came after the longest eye exam of my life. I was only about 6 months late for a yearly exam for one reason or another. I attributed the lengthy exam to my great new insurance or to the tenacity of the younger doctor that I was seeing for the first time.

I could barely see the eye chart on the wall, but I thought, “Well, my Dad had horrible eyes. This must be when I get thicker glasses.”

I was put behind at least 5 machines in the dark. Blue laser-type light was focused toward my eyes more often than I remembered happening at my past eye appointments. Three times I was made to look at the newly blurred eye chart that in previous years was at least somewhat readable to me.

But what began to worry me was the time the doctor spent flipping through the different lenses to help me get a new prescription. (I had to look that flippy/lense, eye doctor’s machine up. Apparently, it is called a phoropter.)

“Which is better, one or two?” He’d ask.

“Well, neither,” I said more than once…. READ MORE….