Ramblings

So today, I went for Lasik eye exam. Just to get a second assessment. The first one I went to a couple of weeks ago said I could go for mono vision in both eyes and be able to both read and see far without glasses anymore. Be rid of the bane of all of my adult life. But the doctor was "not in the network" so to speak of our eye medical insurance so there was no deduction whatsoever. Thought I would get a second opinion and a second cost estimate just to see. No pun intended.

Well, the clinic today in Concord was definitely more hi-tech. All kinds of sophisticated eye equipment. I got my eyes shoned at, my glasses checked and ailments validated. They put some drops in both eyes to dilate the pupils and scan the retinas. Not so good, I discovered later trying to drive home with the half man. The pupils were apparently so dilated, I could barely look at the sun shining through the windshield. Very disconcerting and harsh even through my polaroid Oakley. So I was extra careful on the road. But this clinic does not recommend mono vision - the doctor had done a lot of them but had stopped because the treatment is still "unstable". The prognosis is it would involve elongating my far-sighted eye even more.

Bottomline: both clinics are expensive, but the first one a tad more because the second is currently offering $200 off per eye plus I get a 5% discount because of eye med. But I have decided not to go ahead with either of them - I want to be able to read without glasses, not to get rid of my far-sightedness and astigmatism. These latter do not bother me as much and if the technology to get rid of presbyopia is still "not stable", then I am not willing to spend close to $4,000 to go through Lasik. My kids' college funds come first. Sigh!

Last Saturday, we went to Fairfield for the marching band championship. The finale of the months of training and competition. It was a fitting finale. CalHigh came in first in its class - Class A. The band was splendid. I was such a proud parent, trying to hold my small little digital camera still to take the video and trying to watch over the camera at the same time. The band gave its best performance ever. But the video file is so big - over 1 GB so I am unable to upload it for now. Got to find a way to compress it enough to fit the YouTube 100 MB limit. Going to be challenging. But then again, there are so many much better quality videos of CalHigh's last hurrah, I don't know why I even bother. Actually, I do. It is because my kid was there, in that band, giving her best after months of sun and rain and heat and cold, stumbling and falling, picking herself up, learning teamwork and collaboration and coordination and what it takes to win. And that was why I needed to be there for the competitions, come rain or shine, shivering in the cold blustering wind despite being all wrapped up, losing all sensatons on our bottoms and feet on those uncomfortable stadium seats and shouting my lungs out every time CalHigh is announced. And why I encouraged my little man to shout "Go Nicole!" so his sister would know we were there for her. These are memories for a lifetime.

I could not help but think how far we had come from a tiny tropical paper-chasing island.