Huge lesson for me about eyeglasses...

[emotionallybankrupt]

You've all given me good reason to re-think where I go next year for my eye exam, but unfortunately I'm stuck for this year unless I'm giong to pay 100% out of pocket. Insurance allows me only one eye exam a year. I have a call in to the office now and am waiting for someone to call me back to see "what now." Of course, I know that the "what now" is for me to go in for them to re-assess the whole script. I'l settle for no less.

I know, Susie. I've never left the whole pair of old glasses behind when I've bought new frames and all, but since this was just a case of replacement lenses, I didn't think of the possibilities. I've seldom replaced lenses only.

At this point, I'm in a bind, because there can be no order for a lense until the doctor fixes the prescription. As for contacts, I wore them back when I had a more simple prescription, correcting for distance vision only. That won't work anymore. Medications make my eyes too dry for contacts to work now, and also I need help with far distance, mid distance, and close-up. With school starting soon, this is a big deal. I'm guessing my profession is one of the worst for needing to see clearly at all distances and shift often and quickly. I need to be able to see the class, look over a kid's shoulder at his paper, see the computer, see the papers on the stand that holds my books and papers in the front of the room while I am teaching, and see a book I hold closer to read from. And I have to be able to change focus from one to the other almost instantly, which my eyes can no longer handle.

Here's what I've done for the time being. My new right lense seems to be correct. Interestingly, it was a more drastic change from the old lense than is the problem lense. Luckily, I had another set of glasses of the old prescription, which were chewed and scratched badly by one of my dogs several months ago. I loved those frames, so I had replaced with identical frames. I had the optician put the chewed up left lense into my new set, along with my brand new right lense which I seem to see well from. I can see better through and around the teeth marks than through the new lense.

So...that's where I am now. Waiting. I'll be showing up in their office tomorrow one way or the other.

 

[1905]

I hope tomorrow things go well and the glasses are rushed back so you can see. THANK YOU for the good advice about Sam's. For under $200 we got the exam and glasses. The Dr. there was way better than the place my ins. had covered (when we had it). We still have medical ins., just not eye- I have to opt back into my plan at work for the eye dr.

 

[Marguerite]

One thing to check is whether someone got the prescription backwards ie made up the left lens for the right eye by mistake.

Someone has stuffed up and you need this fixed. You shouldn't have to pay for a checkup because if there hadn't been a foul-up, you wouldn't be needing the second eye exam. You don't need the hole drops in the eye routine, you just need someone to confirm the prescription that was written for you and made up for you, to work out who is financially responsible. It's a quick job. My suspicion is the prescription was wrongly assessed. Otherwise the optician would have already started sorting it out.

It's good you had the old lenses, even if they were a bit chewed.

Marg

 

[emotionallybankrupt]

Upallnight, I'm glad Sam's worked out for you!

I had an interesting/frustrating appointment at the eye doctor. They spent a lot of time with me, re-assessing the prescription, and they didn't even suggest charging me a penny. The technician actually had me looking through the machine so long, making comparisons, that I was getting awful cramps in my neck and shoulders. Despite the "nice-ness" though, I am frustrated because I don't understand what is happening. The claim seems to be that I have been consistent in my choices of "best" on each particular exam day, but that I'm not consistent from last exam to this exam. They wanted to change my script today in BOTH lenses to reflect "today's" choices, but I argued to keep the current new right lense, which seems JUST RIGHT as well as to make the left lense more toward the "old" script which seems CLOSE to just right. Apparently what is happening with my vision in the "real world" doesn't match what is happening in the exam room, and that is disturbing to me, because I don't know what to do about it. My guess is that the new left lense script is a guess. I must admit I don't have any better ideas though.

The doctor believes that the new left lense I had made MUST be defective for me to have been so uncomfortable with it, but nobody can find anything wrong with it in the machine reading. He says that sometimes there are defects that just can't be identified but all is well when the lense is made again.

The optical place ordered the new lense today. Actually BOTH lenses. The policy is apparently to re-make both, even if the change is only in one. Since that is the case, I decided to get the transitions lenses. I'll sure not be turning loose of any lenses I currently have in my possession though!

Probably my biggest frustration is that I don't understand, and I'm not used to leaving a doctor's office without understanding. The more questions I asked, the more muddled things got for me. The appointment was long and they were patient with my questions, but in the end I was confused and didn't know what else to ask. Maybe I'm as much a mystery to them as their explanations are to me. I'm just hoping for the best with the lenses ordered today.

 

[Marguerite]

Interesting. The long time in the chair - they wanted to make sure they got it right.

As for the prescription today, vs the prescription that got made up and the discrepancy - they can't understand it. OK, I'm sceptical. Of course they won't admit that they made a mistake (my former specialist never did either). It's easier to claim your eyes read one thing on one day and now somethi g totally different. But in general your eyes don't change shape that fast or that much, and that could be the only explanation for such a wild variation.

If you keep worrying over it, you will still not get any answers but will instead become paranoid over "Did I perhaps say that it was Ok when int fact it was still a bit blurry?" I actually asked my optometrist that, when I had the problem with my script just like this. And the answer made me feel a lot better - she said that at the level of me not being sure if this or that was slightly better, is so marginal that it would not make any noticeable difference once the glasses re made up. I've learned that if there is an error big enough for me to notice, once the specs are made up - you WOULD notice at the time of the examination.

The most likely explanation is that someone simply wrote the wrong numbers down, the first time. What got made up is what was written down, so their records show that your eyes really were like that when they first examined you. But from your reaction, I doubt what they recorded, was how your eyes really were.

It is easy to transpose a digit, or to write down the wrong one because you read it off the lenses wrongly. It happens.

I left my former eye doctor because it began to happen too often, and again he would not admit to it. It was when he wrote me another prescription (after my optometrist had referred me to the eye doctor for a retina check and he did me a new prescription at the same time). I took the eye doctor prescription to the optometrist, who called me in, got out the sample frames and quickly put in the lenses to mock up the eye doctor's prescription. She asked me, "Can you see well with that? and I couldn't. She then swapped around some lenses and said, "How about this?" and it was brilliant. She then showed me how the second prescription was the one she had recommended for me previously. If I'd gone ahead and had the eye doctor's script made up, that would have been another wasted pair of specs. That was when I decided I'd had enough.

My optometrist told me that day that ophthalmic surgeons insist they're better at doing prescriptions because they know to NOT over-prescribe. We only need 20:20 vision, and the bottom line on the eye chart takes it a lot further. But from my experience, it was the eye doctor who kept trying to over-correct, and often made mistakes in the prescription.

Regarding over-correction - soon after I got my first specs from my former eye doctor, I remember looking out to sea and I could see that the horizon was bumpy. For the first time ever, I could make out the waves on the horizon. But I got bad headaches form those glasses and found a lot of trouble walking on uneven ground, because the spherical aberration was such a problem. So from the beginning, he was over-correcting. It's not normal to be able to see that sort of detail on the horizon.

I'm glad you didn't get charged for the repeat consult and new specs. I hope you enjoy the transitions lenses.

Marg

 

[emotionallybankrupt]

Ugh! I had my whole response ready to send when it just left the screen. If a similar post turns up somewhere on the board that's why. I sure can't find it now.

But yes, Marg. I was thinking of your history with those discrepancies as I was sitting in the chair. It was interesting that at checkout we discovered they had transposed the numbers in my address! They claim, though, that the differences are so slight I should not have been so bothered by any of them. I suppose that leads to the theory of a defective lense. I must admit, however, that one thing I know about myself is that my body IS sensitive to small changes. I notice things that other people don't, which has its pros and cons.

I still think the very structure of the exam is part of my problem. I wish I could have an exam that does not involve light projection, but I'm guessing such an exam doesn't exist. My dry eyes cause the clarity of the images to be almost constantly changing for me. I'm really not worried about having chosen "wrong," though, because whatever I chose, it was my best effort. I was as motivated as anybody to "get it right"!

I'm looking forward to trying out the transitions. I get caught in plenty of situations when "I wish I had my sunglasses," especially at school. The optician says the lenses will never darken to the point of sunglass darkness--which surprises me after seeing Mamaof5's picture, which looks very dark to me--but I'll take all the help I can get! I do also have the non-reflective coating. So, I should be as well set as a body could be, assuming my eyes are happy with this prescription "in the real world."