Riddle Me This

Here's a riddle for you:

When is free not really free?

The answer is a long one, so sit tight. Back in 1999, Linda and I started working for a company that managed to somehow get LASIK as an approved procedure in the vision plan. When I say approved, I mean, no out of pocket cost whatsoever. Nada. Zip. Zero. We both got the corrective surgery done and neither one of us paid one cent.

Fast forward to last year and I noticed that my vision was starting to diminish, especially in my right eye. I got glasses for driving, but mostly, things were ok. Fast forward to the beginning of this year and my vision in my right eye had gotten to the point where I couldn't read street signs. I do all of the legwork and find out that because I had been keeping up with my yearly eye appointments, I'm eligible to have my LASIK touched up free of charge.

So a couple of weeks ago, I go for this mega-dilation that they do so that my optometrist can get a better look at my eye before I go in for the LASIK evaluation and he tells me that my vision has gotten worse since February, which is kind of strange, because it had only been a few months and I had developed astigmatism, which is also odd. He also tells me that my cornea is kind of thin, but is probably thick enough for the surgery.

Today I went for the LASIK evaluation and found out that they can't use LASIK to correct my vision. It would appear that back when they did the original surgery they thinned out the cornea too much causing two problems. One, my cornea is too thin for further surgery, and two, the thinned cornea is bulging out due to the pressure in my eye, hence the astigmatism.

Unfortunately, glasses won't correct the problem due to the fact that the lenses are farther from my eyes and my brain won't be able to put 2 and 2 together and I'll feel like my head is going to explode. That leaves contact lenses, which I wore in high school, and hated. If things continue to get worse, I'll have to switch to a hard lens, in the hope that it will keep the cornea's shape. If that doesn't work, then I'll need a corneal transplant.

Granted, that last one is probably not going to be needed, but at the same time, I woke up this morning hoping to be able to get my vision touched up and instead found out that I'll need to wear contact lenses for the rest of my life. Not exactly what I was hoping for, especially when you consider that prior to getting the LASIK, I wore glasses which are pretty much the easiest thing in the world to deal with.

Oh well. At least I'm still alive, and my vision can be corrected so if all I have to deal with is putting in contact lenses, then I guess I got off fairly easy. Tomorrow I go in to get fitted for the fucking things. I can't wait!

Oh, and Stan Winston died, so it's been a pretty big crap storm of a day. Here's hoping tomorrow is better and I don't find out that my physical therapy caused my knee to fall off.