my Clockwork Orange moment
There's a medical test called Electroretinography, which I had about 8 years ago, when I had a weird eye problem. It has to take place in almost total darkness, and with your eyes at their most sensitive. So, to start with, I had to sit in a blacked-out room with the radio on for half an hour, in the opthalmology department in a major eye hospital.

In total darkness, weird things happen to my eyes, which are a bit more sensitive than average. At first, they over-react; I see spots, and moving patterns. If I focus on them, there's a kind of feedback loop, and I can enter a hypnotic state or fall asleep. (This sometimes comes in handy when I can't sleep at night.) They get more sensitive, obviously: a tiny crack under the door becomes brighter and brighter.

After the half-hour was up, the researcher (a pretty girl named Hillary) came to get me. However, the whole lab was blacked-out with only the dimmest of light, so so she couldn't see where she was going and kept bumping in to things. I could see perfectly, with my acclimatised eyes, so I had to take her by the arm and lead her to the desk. So far, so sweet; then the torture started.

Remember that scene in A Clockwork Orange, where Alex is undergoing "aversion therapy"? His eyes held open with clamps, so that someone needs to apply artificial tears to his eyes? Well, that was nothing, since his eyes weren't sensitised by half an hour of darkness. I had electrodes attached to my head too, hooked to a computer. Hillary - the bitch - then set off a flash gun dozens of times, directly in to my eyes.

Did it hurt? Yes, it fucking hurt, despite what it says on t'Internets. Alex, the filthy Droog, only got to experience emotional torture, while I had the real thing, real physical pain in my real eyes. Just to add insult to injury, after even more tests, the last-ditch diagnosis was ... dry eyes. I now have a better idea of what the problem was - nothing to do with my retinas - but no thanks to Hillary, the specialists ... or Alex, thou no-yarbles eunuch jelly.
( bnt what, me worry?, Sun 26 Jul 2009, 22:46, 1 reply)

Argh!
My eyes are watering now!
( e.m.m.y. foxtrot uniform charlie kilo india tango, Mon 27 Jul 2009, 10:16, closed)