Carolina Eye Totalitarians

Recently I began having trouble seeing out of my left eye. Having had cornea transplants in both my eyes from keratoconus, I have had much experience in deteriorating eye sight. It is not fun. Each radical kerataplasty took about 8 months of my life. For that length of time the eye was basically unusable to me. Through each operation I continued the best I could trying to complete a Doctor of Music Arts in Composition at Ohio State University. In an article in the British Journal of Ophthalmology dated 2004, they studied a group of patients that had had corneal grafts for about ten years. The results were this. There was rapid and severe onset of astigmatism in most of the patients. After exhausting the possibilities of treatment, it was determined compressive resuturing was the best choice. LASIK and other invasive procedures would weaken an all ready thinning cornea. The amount of astigmatism almost doubled making the eye unusable. Well my friends. I would say 20/200 vision and the inability to read or drive with glasses is pretty severe. I went to Carolina Eye Associates in Pinehurst, North Carolina. I did not feel good about the visit, and this is why. Vocational Rehabilitation for the Blind paid for both my eye surgeries. I was in school and making no money, so I qualified. When I went to see them again recently, a counselor approved me immediately saying they would support ANY treatment the doctor recommended. I heard this TWICE after a slew of questions about qualification. "We will support ANY treatment the doctor recommends." A few days later I got a letter from Vocational Rehabilitation for the Blind canceling my case. Seems a contact lens doesn't meet the criteria. In early kerataconus, a hard contact lens is often prescribed to act as a new cornea. The shape of the cornea for some reason moves to the shape of a cone, forcing the person to try to see through the apex of the cone. A hard lens placed over that cone can act as a new cornea giving adequate vision. I wore hard PMMA lenses for over ten years. They saved my life and my vision. Now I am supposed to go through that process again, and yet the diagnosis of the fitting of a contact lens in this case merited a loss of funding. For some reason now my ailing eyesight is not as significant as it was before. Is that because Vocational Rehab does not understand that process? Do they consider a contact lens cosmetic? Is is something you use because you don't like wearing glasses? The answer is unequivocally "No!" Fitting of a contact lens is only one step in a suggestion of treatment that circumvents surgery "of some kind." Well my cornea specialist didn't seem to know what that surgery was. He looked at all those expensive test results, the cornea topography and the thickness of the cornea and said, "You have almost twice the astigmatism you had before." Tell me something I don't know. He also said, "You are likely not going to be able to tolerate a glasses prescription because there is so much difference between the two eyes. Therefore, let's try a contact lens." How would this recommendation somehow not qualify as "any course of treatment the doctor recommends?" Beats me. When I left the clinic, they made me sign a waiver that said I would be financially responsible for the visit if Vocational Rehab decided not to pay. What part of this visit would suddenly violate, "any course of treatment the doctor recommends?" Foiled again. I was not happy with the way the cornea specialist responded to my needs. I went to Carolina Eye Associates because they are supposed to be experts in eye care. The told me this doctor was one of the top two cornea surgeons in the US, yet he downplayed my condition, made a flip assessment of the severity of my condition, and made a diagnosis that left my financial funding in the lurch. He made his money for the visit, screwed me and my vision needs, and left me empty handed when I had all ready been approved for financial coverage for "any course of treatment the doctor recommends." Seems it is time to hire a lawyer. Welcome to the United States health care system. Money for the rich, shit for the poor.