Quik Thinking

Having worn eyeglasses since I was 12, I'd been meaning to get laser eye surgery for several years but was waiting until the technology had stabilized and I could afford it. About a year ago I decided to get it after I was done with Invisalign. Last week, not long after I moved to Montreal for the summer, I ran across a Lasik MD booth in a mall and scheduled myself for a free consult.

Meanwhile, I'd been doing a lot of research on the various options for laser eye surgery and the risks involved with each. At my consult, I discovered that my large pupils (8mm) meant I couldn't use the standard Lasik procedure, which has become very cheap. Instead I'd need the more expensive Wavefront laser. At least I had thick corneas so I wouldn't need to undergo the pain of PRK. I mulled over it for a couple of days, knowing that I could afford the surgery and the surgeon assigned to me was one of the best in Canada but also that there was a 1% chance of complications and a 15% chance of minor regressions.

The day that I finished the Invisalign treatment my glasses also came apart. That was the last straw; I got Wavefront Lasik two days later. The operation itself lasted only a few minutes and was entirely painless. They'd warned me that my vision might remain blurry until the next morning but I was actually able to see fine immediately afterward. That night, however, I realized that I was experiencing ghosting in my right eye when looking at light sources (like traffic lights and neon signs).

Upon my return to the clinic the next morning for a post-op exam, they detected that my right corneal flap had a microfold, which was most likely causing the ghosting. Apparently those are unavoidable and common. Fortunately, they are also easily fixed. The surgeon simply peeled back the flap and smoothed it out. My right eye had blurry vision for the remainder of the day but the ghosting had stopped.

When I awoke the next morning, everything looks great. I returned to the clinic once again for a check-up and was told I now had 20/20 vision. [The ability to burn through steel with my eyes would come later, they promised.] Apparently most people wait 5-7 days before getting to 20/20 so I've been fortunate to have recovered quite fast. Here's hoping I don't experience any regressions in the next few months.

Upon leaving Aguas Calientes we discovered to our delight that we'd been given seats on the fancy train car. Not only did we have enormous plush chairs but there was a masked dancer to entertain us. On the down side, this train took us only halfway to Cusco so we had to take a cab the rest of the way. During the ride we saw these strange rickshaws that looked like they'd been built out of motorcycles.

When we arrived in Cusco, it was raining heavily and Michal was feeling ill so we called her a doctor. The doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis and sent her to a nearby clinic in an ambulance for an x-ray and a blood test before giving her antibiotics. Fortunately, all of this cost her only $100. Later that night JM & I went to check out an interesting bar while Michal rested. I thought it was kinda overpriced but the decor was pretty impressive so we took some great shots of the props.

Since I'm no longer being provided with health insurance through VMware, I decided to buy travel health insurance through a Canadian company. The application form they had me fill asked about a variety of previous medical symptoms. I noted that I'd experienced chest pains 2.5 years ago while biking to work, although the subsequent investigation (an EKG conducted while on a treadmill) indicated that there was no known cause for concern and it hasn't recurred. Apparently this translates to a "pre-existing cardiovascular condition" that causes a difference of several hundred dollars per month if I want to include cardiovascular issues in my coverage! Since I don't actually believe I'm likely to suffer a cardiovascular issue in the next few months, I opted out of that.

Interestingly, while it costs me $144/month for coverage upto a millions bucks while in the US, I'll only be paying $118/month for the save coverage once I leave the US.

My sister recently had her wisdom teeth removed, causing her the usual distress associated with the process. I was initially surprised to learn that she'd done this because she's a few years younger than me and I hadn't bothered to get mine removed yet since I've never had a problem with them. However, she told me that her dentist had encouraged her to get them taken out because they were impacting her molars. Given that I am about to spend a few months travelling, I thought I'd ask my dentist about that when I saw her today for an Invisalign check-up. After looking at my dental x-rays, she informed me that I actually have no wisdom teeth at all. I'd suspected as much because my mother never got hers either but now I've had it confirmed. She explained that I am the next step in human evolution. Pretty awesome.

I've had crooked teeth for ages but I've avoided getting braces to fix them because braces are extremely inconvenient and I'm unwilling to deal with them. Last year, however, my dentist told me about something called Invisalign, which she claimed would not be inconvenient because I could just pop them out when I wanted to eat. This seemed like a great idea so, despite the $6400 price tag, I decided to give it a shot. She took moulds of my teeth and they used 3D modelling software to compute the movements my teeth would need to make, then sliced up the sequence of movements into 23 phases, each of which resulted in a different transparent plastic shell that I'll need to wear on my teeth for a fortnight. All well and good so far, until she told me that I could only have the shell out of my mouth for a maximum of 2 hours per day!

That is proving to be a major hassle because I can no longer just pop food into my mouth whenever I feel hungry, which is very frequently. Neither can I enjoy the luxuriously long meals to which I am accustomed. I feel like the treatment was misrepresented to me because neither the literature, nor the disclaimer, nor my dentist made it clear that I'd be limited to eating for a maximum of 2 hours per day. I'm trying to eat meals faster but I may have to revert the mostly-vegetarian diet I'm been cultivating for the past year just so I can stave off the hunger pangs more efficiently.

Paul Krugman is a pretty smart guy but his recent column on health insurance left me with a sour taste in my mouth. He rails against commercial health insurance providers using pre-existing conditions and sophisticated screening to discriminate amongst customers when it comes to the premiums they must pay for this insurance. Well, duh! That sounds like what auto insurers do. Why should health insurance be any different? Because healthcare is a basic human right (unlike driving)? OK, fine, but who is going to pay for that healthcare? It doesn't make sense to force private enterprise into a contract where they are likely to lose money. That's not capitalism! If you want to provide healthcare to everybody, including those who are very likely to require expensive treatment, then it can't be funded by individuals via insurance because that just doesn't work. To have universal healthcare  a single payer system is needed, although the actual treatment can be provided via a competitive marketplace like Canada has. Calling it insurance is just confusing if you also want universal coverage.