A test that's painless AND useful - finally!

Another trip up to the Moran Eye Center ended today in a nearby gas leak that shut down all roads off hospital hill very effectively for about an hour. But this time we planned 5 hours for a 15 minute test and the timing ended up being just perfect, even after being stuck on the road in front of the hospital for 45 minutes without moving. The campus shuttles and buses were just as stuck, so we didn't feel like the inconvenience was too bad - at least we could choose what radio station to listen to while going nowhere.

For the Goldman Visual Field test, the tech shines a little 1/2" round light, like a flashlight, on an 18" white dome while the patient watches a little hole in the middle (a magnifier to see into the eye). As soon as Sada saw the light, she beeped a little buzzer and the tech ploted her peripheral vision borders. Her left eye was uncooperative today and didn't want to work at all, but the mapping really explained a lot with her right eye.

She has a cone of vision that is about 30% of normal, which is why she's still tripping and falling into things. Try this - look straight ahead with your right eye (close your left) and spread your hands out to the side, then start bringing them forward while wiggling your fingers. Stop when you see the wiggles. Normal is about 120 degrees wide. Now move your left arm straight out in front of your left shoulder, and right arm two or three inches out to the side from what would be straight in front of your right shoulder and imagine a big circle connecting the two. The circle goes on for infinity. That's Sada's visual field. She's missing the side views, but also things above and on the ground - if something drops, she might not see the counter below her and bonks her head.

The vision she does have is perfect with glasses, luckily. And she can read whenever she wants - within normal parameters (4 hours straight every day isn't normal?). We'll do it again in a few months and see how things change. But next time we go up for tests, no more broken gas mains, please!