| Jun. 3rd, 2009 @ 01:32 pm Ocular heist |
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Current Mood:  eye-rolling
Current Music: 3 Doors Down - When I'm Gone
Due to recurring bouts of blindness and pain threshold testing, I went off to the eye clinic today to see what they could tell me about laser surgery. Not that I'm trying to get too fancy, but John and I have managed to build up a tiny surplus now that we're both working, and the lure of never having to wear these blasted cornea-tearing torture devices again was a strong one.
Things were not off to a fabulous start when I arrived a half hour late, after making John hold my hand on the phone for the last ten minutes (fresh out of bed and groggy, yet), triangulating my location because I couldn't find the goddamn place. "On this main road" does not mean the same thing as "on this main road, down an extremely long, unmarked driveway, past several other unmarked buildings, inside a complex with only a tiny sign under twelve other ones". You people do realize that your target customers are, generally, somewhat hard of sight, right? Is it like a mouse maze, and if I finally manage to escape to the trap door of Ye Olde Hidden Office, I'll get the Cheese of Pristine Vision?
Arriving half an hour late did not deter them from letting me wait in the waiting room for another half hour, joining my fellow myopic hopefuls in peering at unnecessarily small type in People magazine and feigning interest over Rihanna's latest fashion choices. The mystery of the entire situation was enhanced by the fact that every single worker at the clinic had refused to tell me, either over the phone or in person now that I was here, what the cost of this procedure might possibly be. Their website listed the range as "somewhere between $990 and $7000", which is a range that I only fall into a small percentage of.
I was finally ushered off by a nurse, who was immediately aggrieved by my unhelpful behavior in wearing my contact lenses. I pointed out that I couldn't see without them, which was kind of why I was here, but apparently one isn't supposed to wear them for several days preceding this kind of exam. This would have been useful information to have been told over the phone, but apparently the clincians' love of enigma got the better of them. At any rate, after providing me with a case and standing over me like a naughty child while I plucked the lenses out, she went through a routine eye exam which included repeating every assertion I made in a tone of complete disbelief, especially when I told her that I couldn't see any of the lines on the chart, no, not even the top one (my dear lady, if I could see shit without my lenses, what would I need your clinic for?).
Having established that my vision is worse than that of a moderately disabled earthworm, she dragged me off the the Room of Scary Machines Made Scarier Because You Can't See Them. Possibly in revenge for my obviously prevaricating ways, she did not explain their tests beforehand, leaving me to repeatedly bang my head against support structures when unexpected beams of light, puffs of air, or unruly flashes assaulted my unprepared senses. My continued questions, mostly about what the procedure entailed and how much it cost, were brushed off with a "discuss it with the doctor", keeping me in mortal suspense up until the very last moment. She also put numbing drops in my eyes and then poked them with a stick. I am not kidding about this, though I wish I were; she said it was to test their pressure, though I think she might just not have liked me very much. And hoo boy, I thought I hated it when I get numbed at the dentist. Numb eyeballs almost did me in. I kept trying to put my hand in my skull to see if they were still there. Apparently this is also discouraged at the eye doctor's office.
Finally, I was returned to the waiting room to await the emergence of the actual doctor. I passed the time squinting at my phone as John tried desperately to text me and ask me if I could give him a ride to work (answer: No, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't even give myself a ride to the water fountain over there--if, in fact, it is a water fountain and not something else, like an end table or a person wearing a lot of grey). Since I'd been told not to put the contacts back in until after the doctor got to prod at me, too, I was denied the joys of People magazine and instead tried not to doze off as Dr. Phil pontificated on the evils of video game addiction.
I think my doctor was the front-man doctor, since he is not the guy that actually does the surgeries but rather one of his assistants. I'm pretty sure he wasted a lot of charm and ruggedly good-looking beaming on me, based on the fact that the peach blur in his head region sometimes had a white blur in the middle of it. After treating me to the stirring story of his own ocular surgery (it was AWESOME!), he proceeded to do some more tests, all the while informing me that the data he was gathering was useless because he'd just have to do them again at a later date when I hadn't been wearing contact lenses (bad patient! Bad!). I was patient, because I could sense that, sooner or later, someone was going to try to sell me something here, which meant that there would have to be an Unveiling of the Price. My favorite part of this exam was when he gave up on the charts completely and asked me if I could see the doorknob on the door across the room (I could not).
Despite my heinously small range of operable vision, he concluded that I was a good candidate for the surgery since I have no health issues and am blessed with unusually thick corneas (apparently, this is very important. My cornea is hotter than yours). From the proliferation of very upset blood vessels, particularly in my left eye, he deduced that I should really stop wearing contact lenses (since I was here to talk about that, I was not very impressed by his detective work) before my eyes actually implode, and cheerfully suggested that I wear glasses for three weeks and then come in for the surgery, thus completely avoiding the need ever to wear them again. How neat! Except I still had no answers to pressing questions, like how much this costs and how long I'd be out of work. But, finally, with an angelic choir-like sound, a price sheet was produced, tailored to my specific eyes, and handed to me. Fabulous. If only I could read it! You are tricky ones, eye doctors. I made his pro-surgery speech fall a little flat by retreating hermit-crab-like behind the sheet of paper, desperately trying to suss out the relevant numbers like a mole trying to find a tuber. Aha. Finally. $2500.
Hmm. Well, steep, but if we could use one of their payment plans, we could swing that. Awesome. Wait... goddamnit, there's some small type under the number! I inhaled the paper and managed to make out the phrase, "*per eye. Extra procedures, followups, and medical necessities not included."
You rat bastards. I've been sitting here for two hours with numb eyeballs and a hostile nurse and NOW you tell me that I can't afford it? As if on cue, my phone beeped to let me know that John had sent me a text message entreating me not to let anyone charge me any money until I had let him run his functioning eyeballs over things.
I did get a consolation prize, however. The doctor felt so bad for me, after I explained that I had no insurance and really couldn't afford a regular eye doctor much less a $5000+ procedure and then promptly tripped blindly over a doorstop and almost nailed myself on his equipment, that he wrote me a free prescription for some new eyeglasses, just so I'd have an up-to-date prescription and at least be out of the contacts now and then to stop the irritation. After guiding me to the appropriate bathroom to replace my contacts (you'd think they'd label bathrooms in an eye care facility with large signs, and possibly also braille and motion-activated voices), he swore me to secrecy (thus the lack of names in this post) and sent me on my way, into the blinding sunlight with my numb, dilated eyeballs.
And then I went to work. Whee. |
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