The Eye Blog

Needing a bifocal is a benchmark in life much like one’s high school diploma, first kiss, first pay check, or first child. Life is never really the same after a benchmark. For those of us who have slipped into that “bifocal age,” life has changed. The name for this...

What you call peripheral vision tests, doctors call central fields (CFs). As a science it’s known as perimetry. It tests your visual sensitivity 300 up, down, right and left. Truthfully it’s a 300 circular pivot around fixation (spot where you’re looking). ...

Cataracts, just as death and taxes, are something everyone will experience. Of course if you die at age three, you’ll know nothing of taxes or cataracts for that matter, well, unless you were born with congenital cataracts. Beyond the rather depressing scenario just...

In eyecare clarity of focus is important. It can even change our lives this time of year, or so some say. I’m settling for brown brackish brine. Woke-up too late for a good cup of coffee. Woke up too late to brew coffee. Thankfully my Keurig provided a pretty fair...

I live in Washington State, one of the first states to usurp federal law and usher in legal “recreational” marijuana. Yet even before recreational marijuana we had “legalized” medicinal marijuana, the intricacies of which I do not understand, and I’m too lazy to...

Through the years there has been a shortsighted allegory accepted among certain factions of America culture about shortsightedness (nearsightedness or myopia) itself. It’s commonly whispered among parents that one of the causative influences of the progression of the...

Palouse lentils have nothing to do with eye care – true or false? The answer is FALSE. If you turn a lentil sideways, you’ll see that its shape is similar to that of a magnifying glass.  The Latin word for lentil is “lens.”  Today the term “lens” is used to...

Dry eye discomfort can be a nagging source of distraction. It’s certainly not the kind of agony you experience with classic migraines, root canals, kidney stones or fractured ribs, but ocular surface disease (OCD) can make an eight-hour work day seem like twelve on...

InfantSEE is a program launched in 2005 for those under the age of one year. Originally it was a study that was to last for just a year or two or three. It was so successful it has been perpetuated, and I do not know the American Optometric Association’s current stand...

I was born and raised on a West Kansas farm – the Dust Bowl. When something broke, you fixed it. I was never a great mechanic, but by age 12 if I wasn’t going to school I was helping on the farm, be it feeding cattle, working summer follow, cutting wheat, fixing...

As Thanksgiving rolls around so does the thought of turkeys. No – not those proverbial in-laws that show up around the holidays purely to contribute their unsolicited opinions. You know. The ones you call “turkeys.” Not those. I’m talking about the bird that adorns...

I love my binoculars - almost as much as my F-150 or maybe even my wife. Please don’t tell her I said that! If you’re around a bunch of hunters don’t mention binoculars. Hunters are experts on everything hunting or fishing. Binoculars and rifle scopes are topics...

Have you ever had your nose pads replaced on your eyeglasses? Should the optical facility charge for them? It’s a good question. At Family Eye Clinic we can get nose pads for $0.10/pair – but not good silicone ones, which are the best. Why? Silicone breathes, so it...

Yesterday you finished morning exercise, a bad cup of coffee, a shower, and combing the rat's nest. Your right eye was red, and so it remains – not just the redness of witching hour bookkeeping. No. Fresh blood on the white of your eye – the stuff of Doctor Strange,...

My radio ads direct you to this site concerning the eclipse and eye health. My comments concerning the upcoming eclipse are about viewing it in and around Pullman, Washington. Those viewing elsewhere should get their information from experts within those areas. You...