For a reason I can’t fathom, I decided to engage in self-defeating behavior and agreed to have pupil dilation during my eye exam. Nobody warned me that I’d lose my eyesight for hours after that dog of a procedure.
Being completely ignorant of the aftereffects of this so-called medical test, I left the doctor’s office and found myself in hell. It’s very sunny outside, and everything had an infernal glare. I was functionally blind, and the doctor said it would last for hours.
Obviously, I realized there was no way I’d be able to drive myself back to work. I somehow managed to type a message to my secretary – or at least, I think I sent it to the secretary – telling her I’m not coming back and to cancel my meetings. I’m sure everybody knows me well enough to understand that no kind of medical emergency would induce me to make a phone call instead of writing a message.
It’s been 6 hours, and I’m better now. I still have to hide inside in heavily curtained places but at least I can read without too much pain. It also so happened that I had to write an unavoidable text today, and I did but it was like writing drunk when you have to squint to see straight.
This was all for nothing, people. I’m perfectly fine and there was never any reason to suspect I needed any testing. What, what possessed me to do this? I still feel like a wreck after all this. A whole day of reading lost. And I’m not back to normal even now.
Let this be a lesson of “if it ain’t broken, don’t dilate it”.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’ve had my eyes dilated multiples times, but never been a big issue for me. Sometimes these things hit some people harder I guess.
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It wouldn’t be this bad if the day were cloudy. But it was exceptionally sunny. Just bad timing.
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My eye doctor has a special machine for photographing the back of the eyeball that allows you to skip the eye dilation. It costs an extra $30 and it’s worth every penny.
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I did the photograph thing! And then the dilation. Nobody told me they achieved the same thing.
This is what happens when you don’t research medical procedures before consenting.
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I agree with what ed said “I’ve had my eyes dilated multiples times, but never been a big issue for me. ”
If you are extremely sensitive to light after eye dilation then I suggest very dark glasses. I’m surprised that you were not given some.
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I’ve had it done, they always sent me home with a disposable pair of dark sunglasses. But that was ages ago. Now… haven’t been to a doctor of any kind in years, and when I take my kids to an opthamologist or a dentist, every single time they want my permission for some extra procedure, or worse, just tell me that’s what they’ll do, I say the magic words: “I’m out of pocket, how much is that going to cost?” If they’re a good practice that doesn’t just scam insurance companies for a living, they will know immediately and maybe I ask some more questions about whether it’s really necessary and then decide if it’s worth it or not. If they have to go spend twenty minutes in the office to maybe get me a price? The answer is always, always NO. And then I find a new practice next time.
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I had my eyes dilated for the first time when I was 13, and no one warned me what would happen. When everything went all blurry I had no idea what was going on and I was terrified! Luckily for me, there was a nice older (well, older than me) lady in the waiting room who had worn glasses all her life and had had her pupils dilated dozens of times, and she explained it all to me and reassured me that my sight would eventually return to normal.
I started needing glasses about thirty years ago, and since then I’ve had my pupils dilated many times, and it always wore off fairly quickly. But when I had my first cataract surgery last summer, they used industrial-strength drops to dilate my pupils, and it took about twenty-four hours for it to wear off afterwards. So I had one eye with a cataract in it and one with a pupil dilated to the point of uselessness. For some reason, when I had the other eye done, the dilation wore off very quickly. All of a sudden the world was a different place — everything was clearer, colors were brighter, I could see things as they really were. For several days I wandered around looking at everything and thinking, “oh, so THAT’S what that looks like!”
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