I didn't mean an optometrist was likely to be able to treat the issue. What I meant was that getting an appointment with an ophthalmologist or neurologist without a referral could take weeks (not to mention that if you choose a specialist on your own for something that could be so many different things, you could wind up with the wrong specialty), and getting an appointment with a family doctor is likely to take days. Whereas - for example - when I had a visual disturbance that turned out to be nothing more than an acephalgic migraine but could have been a stroke, my optometrist saw me and got me referred to a neurologist for an evaluation and a CT that same afternoon.