They did not make me look $136 better!

Have you missed me? I know I have not been too busy to update, but it feels like it most days. I have been working about 9 1/2 hour days at work plus 2 hour round trip commute and by the time I get home, all I feel like doing is vegging out. You would think that I would be catching up after 4 1/2 months of working extra hours, but the work just keeps piling up. Oh, well, at least I am being paid well for it.

On other fronts, I had my cataract evaluation last week and though I CAN have it done now, I am choosing not to. The cataract in my left eye is JUST too the point that insurance will cover removing it. And insurance would cover the one in my right eye even though it is really small. Neither are imparing my vision, so I have decided not to do it now. Especially after I found out how much my part of the cost would be. The least expensive route would run me around $1000, though I could only be given doctor's rate and not the facility's. So, it could have run more. Of course, the adviser tried to really upsell....the "better" procedure would cost me about $4000. That would be to treat my cataracts and my astigmatism. Funny....my astigmatism has NEVER been treated before. Every eye doctor has told me that I am so near sighted that the astigmatism isn't even a consideration.

Of course, the "best" option would be to have my astigmatism treated and have multifocul lenses implanted so I would never have to wear glasses. For the amazing price of only around $6000. Yeah, I can get a lifetime of glasses for a lot less than that. So, no thanks. And though everyone kept talking about "getting you out of glasses", they failed to understand that I don't mind wearing glasses. I have worn them since I was seven. I just don't mind them a bit. (I did wear contacts for quite a few years, but still wore glasses some.)

So I decided to just order some new glasses. Hubby and I went Saturday to order them as I wanted him to help me pick them out, since it is hard for me to see them. LOL! I did take digital pics of myself to see what they looked like, but still wanted his opinion.

We finally settled on a pair and got all the measurements taken and they guy brought over what my cost would be after insurance. $509!!! What!!!!!! I have never paid more than $200 for a pair as we have had really good vision insurance for years. He started breaking it down the cost and I happened to pick up the frame and look at the price. $349!!! I had never even SEEN a pair that expensive in this store.

You all know how cost conscious I am, but it is so hard for me to find glasses frames that I like that I usually don't even worry about price on the frames. Our insurance covers $160 of it, so I don't mind if I pay some over to find what I like. But I learned my lesson and I will never not look at the prices again. Fortunately, before we settled on that pair, we had settled on another pair that I liked okay. Hubby liked them very much. I guess I was being finicky. So I settled on the original pair we had picked out and the price came to $373. I was still a little shocked, but found out that my insurance no longer covers the full cost of my progressive lenses which it used to. Plus it used to cover transition lenses and doesn't any longer. I still got discounts on those and I did not want to switch to lined bifocals, so I sucked it up.

Could we afford the $509? Yes, we could have. But Hubby and I agreed that those glassed did NOT make me look $136 better than the ones I ended up ordering. If they had, I would have gotten them.

In other news, I recovered from my most recent illness which really sucked. I was out of it for quite a bit. On the down side, the steroids did nothing for my knees this time. Ugh! And it seems like the shot I got only 2 months ago is wearing off. I hope it is just that I was using some generic Osteo Biflex for a while that is the problem. I got back on the real stuff and am hoping to be able to walk pain free soon. If not, I will go back to the doc for better drugs.

Happy Monday, All!