Tag: doctor

I Can See Clearly Now

When I told him he said that was entirely unacceptable. “You can’t wear lenses without a fitting.” The fact that I could see with these and not with the ones that were “fitted” was not the point.

I can see clearly now, but he doesn’t care…

It happened about a year ago. A visit to the eye doctor got me to discover what I’ve been missing. My eyes have always been affected by multiple problems that are not typical for a person my age. I am farsighted. I have astigmatism. I have had to wear glasses since I was in kindergarten. It seemed like I will never see clearly without glasses again.

Still it hasn’t stopped me from trying to wear contact lenses. My first try was in college. I had limited success. Contacts have trouble with astigmatism. Then came the Astigmatic lens also known as Toric. This lens was supposed to conquer astigmatism but it was still of marginal improvement and expensive. As I got older, I developed the “older eye” problem and now I needed bifocals.

Clearly my eyewear was getting more expensive and I believe that in an effort to minimize the cost to me, my optometrist was not showing me the possible solutions. A recent change at my eyecare center has had me seeing a new doctor. This doctor is very confident. When I told him that I was having limited success with contacts…he gave me the option to try a lens made for astigmatism and multifocal. I agreed.

The “fitting” is one of the options for my optical insurance plan. It won’t pay for all of it but it does get some of it. He ordered the lens and a few weeks later it arrived and I went back in to pick them up. The whole process was fouled up when the intake person treated me as a regular checkup person and numbed my eyes. Even with glasses, my world was a blur. I couldn’t put the contacts in my eyes because the feeling wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell whether my vision was improved because my world was a blur. It was at this moment that the doctor went from confident to arrogant as he and the assistant were dismissive of my feelings and my condition as they assured me that this would wear off in a matter of minutes. An hour later, I took my sample lenses and went on my way.

During the week, I had limited success but with my experience with other lenses, I figured that I would get used to it. He ordered the lenses and used up the rest of my insurance. As the week went by, I sought out some other pricing on the lenses on the Internet and found my brand and several others as well. I found a national brand that used to be the one name in contact lenses. I figured that they would be the most expensive. They weren’t. Since he sent me with measurements as well, I plugged in his numbers into the new brand. When they arrived…wow! I can see clearly now!! Also, they went in and out so easily and I could wear them for about 8 to 10 hours a day. The ones that were “fitted” were of no value whatsoever and have never touched my eyes again. (Sometimes, I didn’t know that they were there because they were huge and the edges disappeared and I would be digging at my cornea to access them.)

Fast forward about a year. I got the message from my eye doctor that it was time for my annual eye checkup. (Doctor speak for annual insurance money for the taking.) I hemmed and hawed privately about this…but I certainly wanted to let the doctor know that he was the one who turned me on to this lens technology and were it not for the fitting snafu…I never would have discovered the lenses that I have now.

When I told him he said that was entirely unacceptable. “You can’t wear lenses without a fitting.” The fact that I could see with these and not with the ones that were “fitted” was not the point. When he stated, “I don’t make the rules, I just have to follow them,” I then determined that I fall in 3rd or 4th place when it comes to my health.

Here is my perceived order of priority.

  1. Insurance Company
    • Optical Insurance comes almost exclusively with a group plan. Here, the company gets an enormous amount of money that the consumer doesn’t see so that they can be “placated” by perceived benefits.
  2. Vision Correction Vendor
    • This is the limited amount of vendors allowed to offer products through a particular doctor or group plan. The prices for these items are fixed at a significantly higher rate than what you can find online.
  3. The Optometry Practice
    • Every January, I get the important notification that my vision is important and needs to be monitored. When I get in I am run through a series of tests by persons in blue medical scrubs using machines. Their repetitive practice to these processes is what ultimately led to my “useless fitting” last year as a quick question to the patient as to “why are you here?” would have stopped the problem from happening.
  4. The Patient (Me)

My vision insurance has their own “in house” supplier of eyewear and contact lenses. My brand was not on the list. (It wasn’t on the optometrist list either as I heard him tell his administrator who orders and schedules the fittings that it would not be found on the drop down list.) SHOCKER. This “company store” scenario allows them to take the brand that could be shopped for best price and build in extra cost so there wouldn’t be an insurance loss to them.

Insurance companies should be there to stop you from having a devastating financial event linked to a medical issue. Instead, they charge huge amounts of money and placate us with these “perceived” benefits and then rope in the very institutions that are supposed to be there for the patient but grind all the money that they can from our little placations.

When I had my trouble last year, I decided that my “new patient” experiences would be a me first and it has worked well as I have had several instances where I have had success.

  • 7/1 Ganglion Cyst. Great Podiatrist. We planned the remedy together. Reworked my whole supplementation plan that day.
  • 11/13 Broken Arm. Great Orthopedists. They listened to me and told me to decide if follow up appointments were necessary. (They weren’t)
  • 3/29 Cardiologist for preventative concern. Family history and reading had me concerned about Calcium buildup in my arteries. I sought out a Cardiologist and he ordered a scan that I had read about and is often not covered by insurance…surprise surprise. Amazingly, the test happened yesterday and the results came in as I am typing this. Now we, my doctor and me, can move forward in developing a plan to take care of this before it becomes a problem.
  • 4/12 Optomotrist. Looks like he might have to go.
Health Insurance Makes Me Sick

A Whole New Me

So what about creativity??? There is no better message to convey to the world than the one where you are reminded that you create your reality everyday. It’s up to you. I learned that with my health. It goes like this. I wanted ice cream. My wife wanted a cookbook. We went to the bookstore. She went for a diet. I went for ice cream. On the aisle on the way to the ice cream shop in the mall, I ran across a display with books written by a particular doctor. I had seen a couple videos on the Internet. I was intrigued. I bought the book, read it and gave it a chance…really gave it a chance and now…I am a whole new me.

Creation takes time. I know it. So…having never given anything a chance that it should have…I finally decided to run the program. It helps that it was written by a doctor. It helps that he has a practice right here in the Coachella Valley where I live. I still haven’t seen him. I have run the program. Here is where I started.

I began in chronic pain from the knee. I had both blood clots in my leg and torn cartilage in my knees. I know that is what I have. I didn’t even need to get a diagnosis. I did go to the doctor in June of 2018 so that I could get a real doctor in my California home. He ran a bunch of baseline tests. He didn’t show extreme concern since the hospital already had me on blood thinners from the most recent DVT.

I ignored my condition for about a year and then in May of 2019, I began the program based on The Plant Paradox. It is a book by Dr. Steven Gundry. It has been 149 days. I went for a followup series of blood tests. And my eyes are opened.

Test6/5/1810/8/19
HDL4752
Chol/HDL Ratio4.993.9
VLDL CHol4112
Cholesterol234205
Triglycerides20762
Non HDL187153
LDL Calc146141
LDL/HDL Ratio32.7

So these numbers are my “so far” numbers. The other aspects include a weight loss of 30 pounds, the reduction in joint pain in my knees and shoulder. All this with no medication, in fact even a reduction in medication for my blood thinner. The cost was about $14 for a Kindle book and the ability to read and follow a plan.

In my next post, I will discuss my recent visit to a medical practice that is promoting Stem Cell therapy. It will be an eye opener.

An Abortion Story

When the life starts growing, the ethical questions get tougher. In a culture of extremism, the answer to a question like this is difficult to find.

In the summer of 1987, my wife became hospitalized with extreme swelling and high blood pressure. She was in her fifth month of pregnancy. She had an undiagnosed auto immune disease. There are a limited number of medications that don’t cross the barrier to the fetus that may control the blood pressure.

I can still remember being called to the hospital by my wife’s nurse. I came to the hospital and my wife was crying. She had been told that there was no way to control her blood pressure and that they had to administer drugs that would be harmful to the baby and that the very presence of the pregnancy was causing her blood pressure spike. They also induced labor. Later that night, while my wife and I were alone, she spontaneously delivered a still-born child.

What I just described was an abortion. This is a medical procedure for terminating a pregnancy. This decision wasn’t made by myself or my wife. It was made by medical professionals. The doctors weren’t weighing any other political or moral questions. They weren’t worried about the legalities of the steps that they took. My wife’s life was saved, her Lupus was diagnosed and she is a mother today. This didn’t happen easily as another pregnancy ended at 7 months with the death of the fetus in utero.

Today, I have 28 year old twins who wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for an abortion performed over 30 years ago. For the record, I am pro-life. Today, I honestly believe that there are 3 lives that wouldn’t be here if the doctors had to face this decision in this environment. Abortion was a heroic intervention that needed to take place when the circumstances demanded it.

I do believe that abortion should not be treated as a casual solution for an unwanted pregnancy. I do believe that there are choices that can be made before and after sex. When the life starts growing, the ethical questions get tougher. In a culture of extremism, the answer to a question like this is difficult to find.

I recently began a new diet, well, healthy living program. It is based on the premise that all living things want to survive long enough to procreate or reproduce. Their defenses are genetic, instinctive, and rational. They protect their young from the time that they are alive. Certain plants are poisonous until they are ripe and then they become food so that the plant can reproduce. This astonished me, and gave me pause.

Nature wants us to reproduce. That’s why we have a sex drive. God proclaimed for us to be fruitful and multiply. It was Mr. Spock who said, “live long and prosper”. The living long part makes us want to fight the nature of reproducing when our sex drive is the highest. It also makes for a huge market for solutions to the fact that we want sex to be for our own pleasure long after reproduction has taken place and our ability to “perform” is lacking. We are so afraid to separate the science from the science fiction.

Extremists on both sides want there to be black letter law to justify their positions. It is wrong for all pregnancies to be treated the same. My own situation is a perfect example. It is wrong for us to treat life with such disregard as to wanting the government to guarantee that a mother can make the choice for or against a life right up until birth. These are “extremist” views and neither one can be defended in a civilized society. So what if we start there and back off to the center.

If we decide that there are no absolutes and that there is in fact a point where we have to defend the living child inside of the mother as well as the mother, then we can talk about it. We have to define birth control before conception and conception interruption after coitus as acceptable means to control an unwanted birth that may have come from a non-consensual sexual encounter. If we are unwilling to do this, then we have no business being in government.

The bottom line, for me…abortion needs to be regulated as a choice. No medical professional should ever be second guessed by a black letter law when it comes to rendering care to a patient that needs it. Finally, no person, man or woman should have so little regard for human life that they proclaim the ultimate right to life and death of a living viable human being in the name of a cause.

Search your own hearts and know…that black letter law on this subject…is extremism…and if I may be so bold…now it is state sponsored terrorism against medical professionals.