New New Glasses

      Have you been keeping count?  These are my third "new glasses" since cataract surgery:

      1. A pair very shortly after surgery that were meant to be temporary; I knew going in that my eyesight was going to change as my eyes healed.  They made a remarkable improvement nevertheless, especially compared to the old-glasses-layered-with-reading-glasses I was using to get around.  I got them from the nearest Lenscrafters franchise and the optician there did the exam.

      2.(A)  A pair a month (and a week) after surgery, when my usual optician did a full eye exam and determined my new prescription.   (The office used to be part of Ossip Optometry, a local chain and a very good one.  Steady growth had them at 36 locations and three years ago, the second and third generations of the art-loving* Ossip family merged with MyEyeDr.)  The eye doctor I have been seeing there for over a decade is careful and thorough.  I'd been having increasing difficulty keeping the images from my eyes in registration -- the left was rotated a few degrees with respect to the right.  The exam revealed that the prismatic correction I'd had since High School (and had needed less and less of) was going to need an increase -- probably a sign that both eyes were now equally clear, since my left eye had the most serious occlusion prior to surgery and I hadn't been using it much.
         (B) I like MyEyeDr. nee Ossip but the lens supplier they use is  s l o w.  So I ordered bifocals, then took my shiny new prescription† over to Lenscrafters, hoping for single-vision glasses that day.  Nope -- prisms take specialist attention.  They had to send out for the lenses instead of making them in-house.  Still, it only took a week and I had new glasses that worked very well.  (The efficient little onsite lens workshop is a marvel these days, with a lot of automation and a single skilled tech working in an area about ten feet square.  My temporary glasses didn't have a prism and were ready in forty minutes!)

      3. Three weeks after the exam, my new bifocals arrived!  I'd been becoming more and more frustrated at having to look over my glasses (and often close one eye) to read or do fine work, so it's been a pleasure to no longer have to.  Insurance paid for these lenses and about half the cost of the frames.

      This leaves me with a workable spare pair (the single-vision glasses) and I can have my prescription "glacier glasses" sunglasses and the frame with temporary lenses upgraded as finances permit.  Both Lenscrafters and MyEyeDr. have given excellent service and I am happy with them.
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* The Ossip billboard in Broad Ripple was legendary!
 
† At least in Indiana, eye doctors are obliged to give you your glasses prescription, with no quibbling.  It wasn't always this way; in 1977, when  a heavy lens fell out my glasses and shattered while I was at college, 30 miles from my parents home where I was still living, it took begging and tears to get them to read my prescription to a local lens shop in order to have an emergency lens made so I could drive safely!  These days, nobody blinks if you ask for your prescription, though most opticians with an in-house eyeglasses shop don't volunteer it.  It's certainly a lot easier to have things changed or repaired if you get your glasses where you have your eyes examined -- but you are not obliged to do so.