CW: eye stuff, surgery, disability

Tl;dr, I’m half-blind, health insurance sucks, they’re the villain, of course they’re the villain.

A story about vision.

I am basically blind without my glasses. it’s interesting how we think of glasses. For me, they’re a long-time disability aid, one I’ve used since I was ten. I consider them essentially part of my body. I tried contacts for a while, but they didn’t take. (My eyes are really sensitive to them.) They’re literally the most socially acceptable aid in our culture. Basically invisible.

About a year and a half ago, I noticed the vision in my left eye was blurry. I got my eyes checked in January of 2024 and got updated glasses… which did not fix the problem. Sure, they made it better, but not all the way. I went in again in July and got new glasses. Still blurry. No matter how we corrected my vision, it was still blurry. I went back in for a reassessment and…

Turns out I had a cataract in my left eye. 

Apparently basically everyone in their 40s has these, but this one had developed quite a bit, maybe 70% of the way to total obscurity? Im young—I was 40 at the time—and we weren’t really sure why I my eye was deteriorating that quickly. Possibly it was physical damage? Unsure.

This is now July/August of 2024, to be clear.

My eye doctor at the time advised that it wasn’t really necessary to fix it just now. Something like “it might bot be worth the side-effects.” She also told me she was retiring literally the next day. The guy she sold the practice to *entirely disagreed* with her assessment. He said, “side-effects like what, being able to see?”

I went in for cataract surgery in late October/early November. That was an interesting experience, not least because I was the youngest patient I’ve ever seen there. They corrected my left eye to be clear around 14-18 inches. Y’know, reading and/or phone distance. But I’d still need glasses, obviously.

And I waited.

You see, you kinda gotta wait until your vision stabilizes and you’re not having complications from the surgery before you update your glasses. For about a month, I had a pair of glasses (the ones I got in July 2024) that corrected my right eye but not my left. My left was actually rendered useless by these glasses—can’t see close, can’t see far, can’t see anything. The month of November.

In early December, I got an eye appointment literally the day after the surgeon cleared me to do so. We found a clear correction for me. My insurance wouldn’t cover a new pair of glasses until January (because of course they wouldn’t, insurance sucks), so I ordered a pair that I intended to be my backup glasses, and I would order a new better pair in January, with the cool bifocal transition effect that would make reading easier. I put in that order first week of December 2024, almost three months ago.

Those glasses arrived toward the end of December (typically glasses take two weeks—this was almost four), and I knew immediately something was wrong. I could see basically nothing out of my left eye. My eye doctor’s staff recommended I give it a few days, because my prescription had radically changed and my eyes might need to get used to it. This was, of course, terrible advice, but I played along, gave it a week, and when it did not get any better, I went back in for a recheck, and… sure enough, there was a screw-up at the lab and they had put my OLD prescription in my left lens. I guess they assumed that the radical shift in my prescription (because of the surgery) should be in the NEGATIVE direction, rather than the positive, so they assumed the more powerful correction measurement was the one they should put in.

This. This alone was an unacceptable screw-up, but I could roll with it. 

Now that it was January, my dead-beat vision insurance would actually pay for a new pair of glasses. And heck, I might as well get the progressive lenses that would help with reading. So I asked my doctor to refund me for the useless glasses and submit a fresh order for a new pair with the upgraded lenses, to which the money the lab essentially stole from me would then go. Apparently, the progressive lenses would cost significantly more than standard lenses, so I ended up with like a $150 net refund from the not insubstantial amount of money I spent in December. Which is, of course, bullshit, and my insurance should have covered the glasses 100%, but you know, health insurance sucks, so…

Regardless, I got my new prescription on Monday, January 6, and because their office manager was out of the office that week, it took a couple days to agree on what order we wanted to send (and all that payment info above) by January 9. They also had to do another measurement, which they didn’t tell me about until later that week before they could sent out the order, I came in Thursday that week, had a 2min measurement done, and then they would have to wait until the following Monday because the mail had already gone out that week, and they weren’t open on Friday, y’know, fine, whatever. So the order went out January 13.

And like I said, glasses typically take two weeks to be delivered. Possibly a little longer this time, because they’re complex and powerful and whatever, fine, I can wait three weeks. Sure. 

It is now February 20, and my glasses are STILL not ready.

February 20. That’s going on SIX weeks from when I ordered my new glasses.

Apparently, the lab shipped my glasses to my eye doctor, and they’re going to email when they’re validated. Which, considering what happened last time, fair enough–my doctor doesn’t want to give me the wrong thing again. But unless that validation is complete TODAY and I can pick up the glasses TODAY, then because my doctor’s office isn’t open on Fridays, I won’t be able to pick them up until Monday.

Monday will be six weeks since the order went out. Seven weeks since we discovered the lab’s screw up. TWO AND A HALF MONTHS since my new prescription. THREE AND A HALF MONTHS since my eye was ostensibly fixed. More than a YEAR AND A HALF since my eye could see clearly.

I have literally not been able to see properly, either near or at a distance, since at least 2023. 

There were times during this process when I despaired. There were times during this process when I worried I would have a car accident because while I could drive with one eye (my right), I wasn’t fully accustomed to doing so. There were times when I wondered if we should just cut out my left eye and be done with it.

The health insurance situation in this country needs to change. Not only is it a HELL of an inconvenience and a potential danger, but what happens when I finally DO get my glasses, and my eye(s) have degraded because they spent MONTHS uncorrected?

I’m also going to find out what lab my eye doctor uses so I can *never patronize them in any way, ever again.* Might file a formal complaint. We’ll see.

And I know medical professionals aren’t perfect, but it’d kinda be nice if AT LEAST they could put a rush on fixing their mistakes.