I lived the first 72 years of my life with worse than 20/1000 vision, not even correctable to 20/20. The eye surgeon talked me into spending $6K for light-adjustable cataract lenses in lieu of the standard ones covered by Medicare. The ordeal is a bit grueling - standard surgery followed by six weeks of fastidiously avoiding any and all sunlight, even inside the house, three "fine-tuning" treatments with intense light and a final "lock in" treatment with intense light. Holy cow! My vision is now 20/20. The opthamologist who has been seeing me for 25 years could hardly believe it (the light-adjustable lenses were very new at the time, and I was the first example he had seen).
People always tell me what a "miracle" it must be to see clearly without glasses. I tell them that I actually was completely accustomed to being able to put the world out of focus whenever I wanted and that it's kind of disorienting not to be able to do so now. My surgeon said he could understand completely and that they had a case in medical school of a legally blind guy who had his sight restored and was not one bit happy. My retinas are still a bit iffy since the cataract lenses don't improve them, but since I'm now 76 it looks like they are going to hang in there.
Lance, I was not offered the option of the lense you described and, since there is only one FDA approved source of the lens and post Op procedures you opted to
pay extra for, the estimated additional $6,000 out of pocket cost for each eye would have caused me to agonize over having to pay the additional cost.
Everything I learned after reading your post comes from this source,
https://legalclarity.org/does-medicare-cover-light-adjustable-lenses-costs-and-options/My father attended night law school for five years, earning his law degree and then passing the bar exam on his first attempt less than two months after he finally,
in graduated in a combined day and evening state university law school graduating class of only 36, in 1963, at age 34.
He worked his full time day job, had a fourth child during law school, commuting 80 miles round trip to the law school evening sessions at least 3 nights per
week. I was the oldest of his children and his only son. He had no time for me and tried to make up for it by taking me with him on weekend days to the Yale law library which was much closer to our home than the law library at the state university.
After he finally graduated, he accepted an offer to work as an associate for a lawyer in private practice in a one man office, doing mostly debt collection work.
His parents paid the difference between his higher salary earned at the job he left to pursue that private practice opportunity. After a year the law office laid him
off and he immediately drove a taxi for at least a week, until he landed a job as an Allstate Insurance claims office supervisor.
Sharing all of this to establish that I had a birds eye view of the strain on the eyes and the time, effort, and financial sacrifice it takes to earn a law degree.
My father regarded as an insult that the Florida State Bar at that time did not recognize law degrees of night school students,
You overcame the additional challenge of extremely poor uncorrected eyesight, earning your degrees and establishing your successful law practice career.
I am glad you decided to spend the extra costs for state of the art corrective lenses and associated procedures.
I'm 73 and my wife and I are of modest means, barely avoiding medical bankruptcy owing to the out of pocket costs of her treatment over 23 years of
a series of medical crisis,
Be good to yourself, my formative years' memories influence me to believe you have more than earned theoption and ability to pay the extra cost of state of the art of corrective eye surgical procedures!
Topic: Recent deaths of JFK researchers I was unaware of until now. Please add to this. (Read 196 times)