[Leica] My soft-focus eye

Peter Klein boulanger.croissant at gmail.com
Tue Aug 17 23:20:15 PDT 2021


I gotta rant.

Recently, I noticed that the vision in my right eye was getting "smeary" 
and would not come into sharp focus at any distance. It looks like 
taking a photo through a very dirty lens or filter. The other eye is 
fine.  I called my ophthalmologist. The work-from-home receptionist 
tried to "handle" me and offload me to an optometrist. I had to insist, 
forcefully, that I had had several complications after cataract surgery, 
and that I could tell the difference between the need for new glasses 
and a medical issue. She finally agreed to give me an appointment--in 
two months.

Fortunately, my eye doc had a cancellation a week later. After a full 
eye exam, the problem appears to be exactly what I thought it was--the 
membrane behind my lens implant was growing back. So I am looking, in 
effect, through a veil. I'd had this same known complication in the 
other eye some years back, which is how I recognized it. It's not 
serious, and it is easily corrected with a brief, painless laser 
procedure that punches a hole through the offending membrane.

BUT... my eye doc doesn't do that. So now I have to see his cornea 
specialist colleague. Who can see me in... wait for it... two months.  
Then if this second doc concurs with the first, then they will schedule 
the procedure. Who knows how long I will have to wait for that.

In the meantime:

1. Is two month's wait time normal these days?

2. Why do doctors hire people whose sole purpose seems to be to prevent 
you from seeing them? I've had several instances in my life where 
something was seriously wrong, but I had to argue forcefully to a 
dismissive receptionist or medical assistant to be grudgingly given an 
appointment. In one case I was coming down with full-blown pneumonia, in 
another, one of my retinas was detaching.  In the former case I was told 
to man up and go back to work, in the latter, that it didn't sound like 
anything serious, and I should call next week to schedule an 
appointment. If I had given in to these gatekeepers, I would likely have 
ended up hospitalized or blind in one eye.

3. (obligatory on-topic content) While my right (shooting) eye remains 
in Pictorialist soft-focus mode, I can't focus my Leica RF, and even 
using an autofocus Olympus isn't pleasant. Shooting with my left eye 
feels awkward and weird. Have any of you had to switch shooting eyes, 
and how did you do it?  Is it worth the effort to switch for a couple of 
months?

--Peter



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