Eye Update

Yesterday J and I went ot the eye doctor. We have vision care covered by insurance this year for the first time. Well, I guess we had some preferred providers before, with discounts, but this is the first time I have felt like we have some good benefits.

I'll tell my story first. I got an exam for my $20 co-pay and then contacts for nothing. Woohoo! I was beginning to feel old in my glasses, and I hope this will renew me in some way. My prescription was actually less than what is in my glasses, for one eye. So I have my glasses as backup, and I'll start wearing contacts all the time. But now I need some regular sunglasses. I joked with Lar that I got silicone implants----not those kind of implants! The contacts are made of silicone.

J is a surprise. He was excitedly looking through the glasses displays while I filled out paperwork. He had his eye on some really bold ones with wide blue legs (is that right? the part on the sides?) and red frames around the lenses. He was having a good time, and we talked about getting the new glasses before the school pictures next Thursday. Then we went to the exam room, and J looked at all the letters on the wall and complained about the lights being shined in his eyes. (He has always been very sensitive to light, and I think it has to do with his amblyopia {spelling?}). It is this doctor's opinion that he doesn't need glasses. WhA? The idea is that since he has one eye that is so bad (about 20/60), his brain has turned it off. He pays no attention to the imput he gets from that eye. He has been functioning with one eye for a year without glasses. And one sign that there is a problem, and glasses are necessary, would be if he had headaches, especially over his right eye (the good one). He has no headaches. He claims he can see just fine (as long as his good eye is not covered up, haha). The idea is that even if you put a lense in front of that bad eye, he has gotten so used to not using that eye that he'll continue to not use it. This logic makes sense to me. I hate to think that he isn't using one eye, though. That he won't turn it on, ever, is the part that Lar was not in total agreement with. And I guess I want to mull it over a while. Do a little research. So I left yesterday thinking, "Okay, I don't have to spend money on that." But one persuasive factor is that this eye doctor has the same eye condition as J and maybe understands it pretty well. Admittedly, he told us that you could go to other doctors and they would give you some other opinions. He didn't refuse to give him glasses, but he really thought it wouldn't change his life to have them.

The other thing about this visit I had to write about was the actual physical location of this practice. I used the insurance website to find the local doctors. This one is in downtown, which is close to J's school and the closest doctor to our house. So that's a plus. And I am ALL FOR patronizing the businesses downtown. For those who don't know, out town's downtown was in bad repair for a while, and there is a movement to bring it back to life. I am very in favor of that. There are interesting buildings down there. And this office was one of them. Of course, in any eye doctor's office, you have those long exam rooms to get vision checked in. This building had to have been modified for that, and we could see the brick walls inside, old brick cloumns, high ceilings that are typical of these old Texas downtowns. I love it. Everything was painted nicely and just interesting. Reminded me a lot of the buildings in Granbury.

Anyway, that's yesterday. Maybe I'll add a post about my new look sometime soon!