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I am writing this from the "meeting room" at the Boston Foundation for Sight. Just the fact I am able to be online here--in other words, that the BFS team has made a (very fast) wi-fi connection available--tells you a lot about the place.
So a quick summary of the morning of day #1:
I leave my parents' house in Lyme, CT at about 8 AM and I drive to Needham, MA, which is about 20 miles southeast of Boston. I note that there is a nice public library and a Trader Joes within a brief walk of the clinic.
When I arrive for my 11 AM appointment at the professional building which houses the BFS, I check in and do the usual 15 minutes of insurance stuff. I am then led into a treatment room, where a young lady goes through a set of questions about my symptoms, and informs me that I will be answering this particular set of questions again in 6 months if I turn out to be a candidate for the lenses. Typical question: "How has your vision affected your ability to drive at night." The answers are "Likert-scale" types, with five ascending possibilities, i.e., "None, a little, moderately, severely, I no longer do this activity due to my vision or other problems."
Next, Dr. Perry Rosenthal comes in the room and goes over my case in detail. After discussing the events that led me to the Boston Foundation, he sits back for a minute and says "this has been really shitty for you." I play this down a bit, but in my heart I know that he is right, and it is very nice (and rare) for a doctor to acknowledge that there is a human being sitting across from him, rather than just a disease. I do this on every visit with my patients--just say something to them that lets them know I am sorry they are suffering--and I have never figured out why more doctors don't make it more personal like this. Suffice it to say that I am impressed with the man.
Within a few minutes, he has done a slit lamp exam, helped me get a pair of contacts in (patiently, as I have never worn any hard contacts before, and am a bit squeamish, surprising when you consider all of the other stuff I have been putting in my eyes the past 3 years). They feel a bit funny around the very edges--no pain, not "crackly" like the dry-eye feeling that we all know and love, but (I'm grasping for a word here, and this one is not quite right, but the closest I can find) ticklish. I have now worn them for about two hours as I write this, and the ticklish feeling is mostly gone, but there is a wee bit of heaviness that I am feeling. (Will this go away?)
The next part of my morning is what blows me away. Mark Cohen, the executive director of BFS (a hulking, bald, constantly-joking man--he of the infamous comment at the Wellness Workshop), gives me the tour. He takes about 15 minutes to do this, and I am amazed to see that there are four rooms for patients to wait in. One is a media room, with DVDs, etc. One is a "meeting room" with a big wooden table and chairs all around. One is a quiet room, with a big suede couch and dimmable lights. And the most important of these is the kitchen, which is stocked with food, drinks, a full fridge, a microwave, a coffee-maker, and a whole lot of signs that say "take whatever you want." Mr. Cohen explains that patients do a lot of trying on contacts, wating for a few hours, trying on another pair, repeat, and so on, so they have created these rooms for our "down time." And there is good wi-fi throughout the place, so I can do all of my little geeky things (like this) while I wait.
Next, I am placed in "the torture chamber," where a fan is blown on me for 20 minutes. I am amazed that I can survive this, though I have to admit, it isn't entirely comfortable. But I don't think it would have been possible at all without the lenses in.
Finally (for now), I head to the kitchen and nuke myself some lunch, talk with some other patients, and just about now, they are calling me back for another exam. More to come...
PS: If I am putting too much detail in these "reports" please let me know. I'm trying to help those "fence-sitters" decide whether this is right for them, but I don't want to bore you too much.
So a quick summary of the morning of day #1:
I leave my parents' house in Lyme, CT at about 8 AM and I drive to Needham, MA, which is about 20 miles southeast of Boston. I note that there is a nice public library and a Trader Joes within a brief walk of the clinic.
When I arrive for my 11 AM appointment at the professional building which houses the BFS, I check in and do the usual 15 minutes of insurance stuff. I am then led into a treatment room, where a young lady goes through a set of questions about my symptoms, and informs me that I will be answering this particular set of questions again in 6 months if I turn out to be a candidate for the lenses. Typical question: "How has your vision affected your ability to drive at night." The answers are "Likert-scale" types, with five ascending possibilities, i.e., "None, a little, moderately, severely, I no longer do this activity due to my vision or other problems."
Next, Dr. Perry Rosenthal comes in the room and goes over my case in detail. After discussing the events that led me to the Boston Foundation, he sits back for a minute and says "this has been really shitty for you." I play this down a bit, but in my heart I know that he is right, and it is very nice (and rare) for a doctor to acknowledge that there is a human being sitting across from him, rather than just a disease. I do this on every visit with my patients--just say something to them that lets them know I am sorry they are suffering--and I have never figured out why more doctors don't make it more personal like this. Suffice it to say that I am impressed with the man.
Within a few minutes, he has done a slit lamp exam, helped me get a pair of contacts in (patiently, as I have never worn any hard contacts before, and am a bit squeamish, surprising when you consider all of the other stuff I have been putting in my eyes the past 3 years). They feel a bit funny around the very edges--no pain, not "crackly" like the dry-eye feeling that we all know and love, but (I'm grasping for a word here, and this one is not quite right, but the closest I can find) ticklish. I have now worn them for about two hours as I write this, and the ticklish feeling is mostly gone, but there is a wee bit of heaviness that I am feeling. (Will this go away?)
The next part of my morning is what blows me away. Mark Cohen, the executive director of BFS (a hulking, bald, constantly-joking man--he of the infamous comment at the Wellness Workshop), gives me the tour. He takes about 15 minutes to do this, and I am amazed to see that there are four rooms for patients to wait in. One is a media room, with DVDs, etc. One is a "meeting room" with a big wooden table and chairs all around. One is a quiet room, with a big suede couch and dimmable lights. And the most important of these is the kitchen, which is stocked with food, drinks, a full fridge, a microwave, a coffee-maker, and a whole lot of signs that say "take whatever you want." Mr. Cohen explains that patients do a lot of trying on contacts, wating for a few hours, trying on another pair, repeat, and so on, so they have created these rooms for our "down time." And there is good wi-fi throughout the place, so I can do all of my little geeky things (like this) while I wait.
Next, I am placed in "the torture chamber," where a fan is blown on me for 20 minutes. I am amazed that I can survive this, though I have to admit, it isn't entirely comfortable. But I don't think it would have been possible at all without the lenses in.
Finally (for now), I head to the kitchen and nuke myself some lunch, talk with some other patients, and just about now, they are calling me back for another exam. More to come...
PS: If I am putting too much detail in these "reports" please let me know. I'm trying to help those "fence-sitters" decide whether this is right for them, but I don't want to bore you too much.
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