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May 30, 2006
I'm healed!
What a difference a new pair of glasses makes! The last prescription just wasn't right—whether it was the prescription itself, or the filling of it. So I went back to my same opthamologist (I have to be checked yearly for the progress of the cataracts, and also to make sure I'm not developing diabetic retinopathy or some damn thing), but this time I didn't take his prescription to the optician at his office. Instead, I went to the optician out here in the boondocks, at the office of the optometrist I used to see back before I began working in Syracuse and thus became just too too fancy for country practitioners. And after a series of calls back & forth, it became apparent that the fancy opthomologist had written the prescription wrong and was refusing to send a corrected version to the country optician. So finally Mike Spellicy, the (very good) country optometrist said, listen, let's just settle this, and I'll do a new exam free of charge, and then we'll have the prescription written right.
And lo and behold, it wasn't just that the prescription was written wrong; the diagnosis was wrong, too. No wonder my glasses hadn't been right!
As of this evening I have my first set of new glasses, with the right prescription. Oh, my, yes. These are computer bifocals: I have the short range in the bottom half and the midrange in the top half. This enables me to work with the computer screen and with a book or manuscript simultaneously. And with the entire top half devoted to the intermediate distance, I can see the entire computer screen without having to move my head up and down. When I'm hand coding a web page, that's a godsend.
Now my trifocals have been sent off to have the right prescription filled in them, too. They won't be back for a week—that's one of the prices of country practitioners—but when they do come back, they'll be right. Meanwhile, I'm able to function with an old pair of glasses. Fortunately, the old ones are trifocals, too, and not those varilux lenses that won't allow me to read a manuscript page without moving my head back and forth.
And the fancy opthamologist? Thankyouverymuch, he's been fired. I'm switching to Hamid Moosavi, BP's wonderful opthamologist in Utica, and I'll continue to have Mike Spellicy do my eyeglasses prescriptions.
Those of you who have reached at least your 30s and are finding that first you need distance glasses and then bifocals, you'll understand why all this is so important. For the rest of you: Well, you live a charmed life. And the burro you rode in on.
Posted by senioritis at May 30, 2006 09:23 PM