Kestrell and Alexx go to the ocularist

[kestrell]

The appointment I had for a couple of weeks ago had to be rescheduled due to the terrible rain and the taxi company which lied to us that it was sending a taxi, so we went forth into yesterday's rain for the two-hour long fitting process. I asked Alexx to document the process, so he wrote
a four-part
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/287659.html
photo
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/287849.html
essay
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/288231.html
with lots of pictures
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/288472.html
(not for the squeamish).

The two ocularists who made my prosthetic eyes are technicians who learned the business from their father (a number of centuries ago there was a town in Germany which was known for making glass eyes, so the prosthetic eye as learned craft has some precedence).

The average cost of a single prosthetic eye is $2100. They make about four hundred eyes a year, have 21,000 consumers, and the age of their clients range from babies a few months old to seniors in their eighties and nineties. They get customers from outside of the country and also from out of state, as it seems that the production of prosthetic eyes is not always quality-controlled.

Hint: if it hurts, it was made incorrectly, and if someone tries to tell you that prosthetic eyes do not require the process of taking an impression and being fitted specifically to the individual eye socket, they are lying (and yes, we got to hear a story about a kid who had to spend a lot of time crying in pain due to some stupid so-called ocularist who didn't know or kept from the kid's mother this last detail about the eye being fitted). It's also disheartening to find out that the issue I had when I was thirteen--namely that I spent six months with a 70+ eye pressure because my personal eye doctor (who was also an eye surgeon) was reluctant to remove the eye--still goes on, especially with young women, as male doctors tell the girls things like if they get an eye removed, they'll regret it. I'm posting this here just in case somebody who is living in excruciating pain is searching the Internet for information: no one I have ever talked to who has been in this situation has ever regretted it; far from it, most of us were ecstatic to get our lives back. If you are in this situation, the only answer is to try different doctors until you get one who gives the right answer.

Odd fact of the day: one of the ocularists noticed my brass rat and was surprised to find out that the MIT mascot is a beaver. I explained that beavers were nature's engineers, and that I recently read an article about school mascots, and the weirdest one was a slug. The ocularists insisted that this must be a joke, so Alexx googled and yes,
the mascot of UC Santa Cruz is indeed a banana slug
http://www.slugweb.com/history.html
a popular choice by the students strenuously resisted by the school administration which preferred the sea lion. Finally, the students proactively funded the referendum: final decision a victory with a 15;1 ratio for the slug over the sea lion.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

That was an awesome series.

I was struck by your smiling demeanor. Also disappointed that they didn't provide you with a footstool (or at least a weighty reference book at least 4 inches thick).

WTF about the eye surgeons not wanting to remove a painful eye? Is the motivation to keep you looking typical?

[kestrell]

Yes: given the choice of keeping a young girl looking "normal" or letting her live in almost unbearable pain, obviously the right choice is to keep her looking normal. I got a lot of this tude when I got my first prosthetic eye, as my family were strong advocates of normal = good, everything else = weird, and I ended up having to soothe a lot of the adults in my family who threw little hissy fits and moods about how I was going to be a freak (they never used that word, but it was obvious that I was the only one happy with my choice). Even the looking normal part is debatable though: have you ever had to witness someone who was living in chronic pain They lose weight, they don't eat, don't sleep, don't laugh, can't do anything, just look kind of passive and traumatized. When I was going through this as a teenager, I looked like a concentration camp victim, and my eye doctor kept trying to tell my family it was just mono or something. Seriously, allowing anyone to live in excruciating pain when you can do something about it should be a crime, and in my book, it is immoral.