Visit To The Eye Doctor - Fancy Frames And Inside Closeups

I first went to Dr. E - as he reminded me yesterday - in 1975.  His office is in Beverly Hills, but the prices don't reflect that.  We came down to LA often enough to visit my mom over the years that I could get a check up every year or two.  He's a great doctor - considering how well my contacts work - we get along well, and he plays real jazz in the background.  Not only am I one of the patients he's had the longest, but he also appreciates that I come all the way from Alaska to get my eyes checked.

The waiting room had mostly ordinary glasses on display.  But there were also several very splashy ones.

Dr. E has gotten a new toy since I was here two years ago - it's a machine that takes pictures of the inside of your eyeball.  Here's what I look like inside - at least the way the machine paints it.

The blue at the bottom is the macula.  And he pointed out where a few bits are breaking off.  He didn't seem to worried at the moment.  I couldn't make sense of this at first but he explained it was at the back of the inside of my eye.   This picture I got online might help.  

Image from dreamstime

 The Macular Society tells us this (there's also a video there):

"The macula is part of the retina at the back of the eye. It is only about 5mm across but is responsible for all of our central vision, most of our colour vision and the fine detail of what we see.
The macula has a very high concentration of photoreceptor cells that detect light and send signals to the brain, which interprets them as images. The rest of the retina processes our peripheral (side) vision."

It's pretty important.







If I understand this right, the white spot in the darkish area is the macula.  Then there are other areas and layers of the eye as you can see in the chart above.

Here's a different view.  

I need to wrap this up because Alaska's being given a bad rap again - a storm from the Gulf of Alaska is headed for (maybe already there) Northern California and we're supposed to get rain here in LA tonight.  So I want to go for my bike ride before it starts.  It's already pretty gray out.