When is an Optometrist Not an Optometrist?

This week, I finally saw my optometrist who I’d managed to avoid for nearly two years. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get more contact lenses without seeing her, so I bit the bullet. Typically, she wants to check my eyes with a plethora of crazy contraptions, kindly charging me for the pleasure of torturing me into holding my eyes and face in extremely unnatural ways. This time, for a couple of reasons, I rebelled and insisted they book me an appointment which included the alternative of dilation on the same day. In order to encourage patients to incur the additional fee and make use of her expensive electronics, she typically tells us to come back another day for a dilation appointment.

Even so, she failed to look at her chart and launched into her usual speech about how important it is to go through all of the diagnostics. This year, though I informed her that I’d made a consecutive appointment for the dilation as I no longer had vision insurance, she continued with her rant, telling me that I should “give up a couple of Starbucks’ a week in favor of my health.” So, now she knows what my financial priorities should be as she’s become a financial adviser as well?

And Yet, a Second Career Wasn’t Enough Either

We finally got the subject of a thorough examination of my eyes sorted out. Did she stop there? Tell me what you think. One of the tests they did this time was to check my blood pressure. I asked the optician if it was new and the response was “No. We’re supposed to do this.” Not much of a response, if you ask me, but I went along with it, waiting to raise the question again with the optometrist. This time, the response was a little better, though far from satisfying. “We used to do it but our machine broke and I didn’t get around to replacing it until last year.” Still not much of a reason for doing it, if you ask me.

As it didn’t seem to matter one way or another, I let it drop. But enter my Optometrist, the Medical Professional. “You know, my blood pressure was a high and I knew I wasn’t going to drop thirty pounds overnight or get more exercise so I went to my doctor and insisted he put me on blood pressure medication. If you don’t do something now, you could stroke out like my eighty-year-old aunt did.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it just a tad illegal or at least morally wrong for a non-medical professional to give medical advice? Let’s not even get into the fact that my blood pressure wasn’t excessively high, just higher than normal, and that I’m pretty sure a sinus infection was the cause as well as more weight than I like to carry.

Being the ardent natureopath I’ve become over the years as I slowly develop allergies to the common antibiotics, I pointed out that blood pressure medication is not without its own very nasty side effects. But Optometrist, M.D. was not to be deterred.

There Comes a Time When the Handwriting on the Wall says “Move On”

There were certainly valid reasons for delaying my visit to this particular practitioner, but after the visit, I had to listen to her final rant about how unfair it was that companies like Costco and 1800Contacts could sell lenses cheaper than optometrists until they apparently ganged up on the contact companies and made them give everyone the same deal. At that point, I asked for my prescription and paid what I believe is an excessively high bill compared to what I’m used to and got out of her office.

To finally get to my point, I realized that I’d avoided her for as long as I could after my last visit for very good reasons. I now have contacts for another year and when it’s time to have my eyes examined again, I will seek the services of another practitioner. If I don’t heed the warning signs now, it will be my head rather than my eyes which will need to be examined. I’m all for supporting small businesses, but when they make it very clear that it’s all about the money, I’m just turned off.

I welcome your input into this topic. Do you have service providers who seem to overstep their boundaries? How do you handle it?

My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful for options.
2. I am grateful that I can blunder through a situation, then step back later and think it through more clearly.
3. I am grateful for companies which can offer better deals on products I use or at least some kind of rebate like Ebates does.
4. I am grateful that I am finally getting back into some of the good habits I had been letting slide.
5. I am grateful for abundance: love, friendship, family, joy, dancing, opportunity, peace, harmony, health, prosperity and philanthropy.

Blessed Be

And now for some shameless self-promotion:
I’d love it if you’d visit my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SheriLevensteinConawayAuthor?ref=aymt_homepage_panel and my website, www.shericonaway.com. I’ve created these pages as a means of positive affirmation and would be very grateful if you’d “like” them or leave a comment! Thank you!