With many thanks to Mom and Costco, I've got new contact lenses. This is my first time ever using disposables; I opted for the "monthlies" (i.e., you change pairs every 30 days). Just about everyone claims disposables are better than the old standard "daily wear" lenses, but I've always found disposables both ridiculously expensive and a pain to store, because you have to store more than one pair of lenses. The doc assured me, though, that my disposables wouldn't take up much space during my hike. I'll have four boxes of them to haul with me when the time comes to mosey on.
But not yet. My lenses will be in the store next week. Today, I came home with only a "trial" pair, which the doc says are as good as the normal disposables. The eye exam set Mom back $89, and a year's supply of disposable monthlies cost a cool $160-- Costco, indeed. The exam took nearly an hour and involved a battery of tests. When I compare these facts with my experience getting contacts in Korea, well, there's no comparison. In Korea, I was in and out within about 15-20 minutes. The doc used a low-tech but effective pair of tests to determine my prescription strength, and didn't ask me to remove my lenses. The cost for the exam plus the lenses was something like $70. Compared to spending $250 (thanks, Mom), $70 is a steal. To get such a price in the US, would I have to visit some shady character in a back alley?
Part of the reason why eye care is so cheap in Korea has to do with the preponderance of bad eyes over there. Eyewear shops can be found on practically every corner of downtown Seoul, as well as in the shindoshi (new cities) around Seoul. I imagine the same is true in other Korean cities and towns. Koreans necessarily take eye care seriously, and such seriousness is routine. Here in Costcoland, by contrast, you pay through the nose, waste a lot of time, worry about legal issues, and don't even get your lenses the day you do your exam.*
For most of my walk, I was kicking myself for not having gotten new lenses while I was still in Korea. I ended up wearing my Korean pair, acquired around Christmas of 2006, until just today. I had no real problems with them-- no serious protein buildup, no irritation, nothing. Even today, they were going strong. Seems a shame to toss them, but the doc thinks I should. Maybe I'll toss them tomorrow morning, after a proper goodbye. I can't bring myself to do it tonight. Chucking perfectly good contacts is almost as painful as euthanizing a healthy pet.
The doc also notes that I'm on the borderline for glaucoma, but that's old news; I've heard that "You're borderline!" warning for years. Of more interest to me were two other things the doc said: (1) I've got larger-than-normal optic nerves (sometimes associated with glaucoma, but I choose to view them as a sign of awesomeness), and (2) because not enough oxygen is passing through my corneas, I'm right on the brink of some nasty trans-corneal neovascularization-- the formation of new blood vessels that penetrate the cornea in an attempt to acquire more oxygen. I've seen pics of blood vessels actually woven into contact lenses, bolting the lenses into place. Not pretty.
The new disposable lenses are supposed to help this latter problem; they're made of some sort of hi-tech breathable material that makes them much more permeable than previous soft lenses. As for the potential glaucoma issue, the doc gave me the name of a specialist to see. I doubt I'll see her anytime soon. You know: money, insurance... all the stuff I had as a member of the work force in Korea, but lack as a Kwai Chang Caine-style itinerant here in the States.
All the same, I'm happy to have new lenses after two years' waiting. Better lenses than Lasik (pronounced "rah-jik" in Korean-- sounds a bit like "logic"), I say: $2000 for eyes that will need surgery again in a few years is too steep a price to pay. If Lasik were only $10 per eye and could be done in a department store booth, I'd look into the procedure right away. For now, though, lenses will do just fine.
*In all fairness, this may depend on the store. I remember an American optometrist in a mall not far from my parents' house who provided lenses the very day of the exam.
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1 comment:
I don't specifically know what kind of lenses you previously had, but I had to switch to disposables a couple of years ago because they stopped making the other kind. According to my eye doctor, the contact lens industry consolidated and there wasn't much money in the kind of lenses I wore (the only kind (until then) of soft contact lens my myopic and astigmatic eyes could handle). I wear them, but I just as often wear my glasses. $160 is a good price--I pay more than that for a year's supply, which is why I don't buy a year's supply (my old contacts cost $75 each, and because my eyes don't produce mush protein buildup, I was often able to use them for longer than a year).
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