Today's Adventures in Health Care Accessories

Only two to report:

1. Went to the upscale glasses place to possibly get new glasses. When I called in to my eye doctor's office to order more contacts, I also asked them to toss in a paper copy of my glasses prescription. The guy at the glasses place very quickly determined that they only had one frame in the store that was my size. He recommended another store that has a larger children's department. The last time I bought glasses, I ended up at the pediatric opthalmology practice. I fear I may end up back there and end up spending many hundreds of dollars on glasses. While children's frames are somewhat uncommon, it is even more uncommon to find children's frames that are large enough for bifocal lenses.


2. Also went to the doctor today, and he confirmed my suspicion that I have tendonitis. (There are limited options for pain at a joint, and I was pretty sure that it wasn't arthritis, so it's not like tendonitis was that difficult of a guess.) One of the big culture shocks of moving here was the level at which doctors talk down to people. When I lived in Ithaca, NY, where everyone has a graduate degree, the doctors spoke in direct and accurate terms. People here are much less educated, and doctors get used to talking down to people. At today's appointment with the doctor, when the staff gave me the form on which I was to write down what I wanted to talk to the doctor about and what my symptoms were, I made sure to use words like "flexion" and "supination" and "radial" to describe the pain in my elbow. I now have a prescription for a brace of sorts. Now I just need to figure out where to go to buy one.