Dateline: Crystal Gateway Marriott, Arlington, VA

I left home early this morning to go to DC for the Naval Engineering Workshop (NEW) and flew Delta. I really do not like flying ASA Airline, they are so unreliable, but at times it beats driving somewhere else. Anyway, while traversing through the Hartsfield International Airport I made a stop by the head. I was doing a particularly good job of washing my hands because I had ruin across for too many people with runny noses when my bags started slipping. I decided to loop my laptop over my head for safety and in the process the laptop and my glasses started heading for the floor. I opted to save the laptop but the result was a chip in my glasses. For a while I have fly vision.

Once I got to DC I checked around the hotel but could find no one who could help me out. So I fired up the laptop, tracked down a LensCrafters at Pentagon Centre and made a phone call. A short Metro ride and an hour and a half later I had a new pair of specs. I also owe my daughter a great deal of gratitude as well. I’ve had a new prescription for a while but had not found anyone around home that I trusted to fill it. I was not happy with the fitting for the last pair of progressive lenses I got locally and was holding off for someone else. My daughter found my prescription and faxed it to me at the hotel and LensCrafters helped me out of a tight. These lenses are also better than the last as far as the alignment goes. If only we had a LensCrafters nearby.

A few years ago when I needed glasses in Starkville, I was told to go see an Ophthalmologist in town who also dispensed glasses. I was told they were the best when it came to fitting me with the kind of lenses I wanted. My ophthalmologist is in another town but since I see him so seldom and have seen him for so long, I see no reason to find someone else. Anyway, when I went to get my prescription filled with the ophthalmologist in Starkville I was told he couldn’t fill it because of an agreement he had cut with the hospital. It turns out the optometrist in town got upset that a real doctor was coming in and going to sell glasses. So the deal the hospital worked out was that the doctor could sell glasses to his patients but could not fill other prescriptions. He could have given me an exam and filled the prescription with no problem but I would have been out more money for a needless exam.

That is when I really started to question the competence of our hospital and the motives of the optometrists in town. The hospital should have stood up and fought for the ophthalmologist but I know about how spineless they are. The optometrists were just shamelessly protecting their business interest. I guess the free market applies unless you are an optometrist, so I have avoided them here as much as I can ever since.