He's not cheap nor apathetic. He hates to admit he is getting old. In any case, he told me today that he is planning on having his eyes checked beforehand. I think it's borderline if he needs reading glasses or not, and the insinuations that he's a blind idiot are not fair.
It may not be fair, and I apologize. But I don't know this guy. All I know is what you're saying, and what that boils down to for me is this: A middle-aged or older guy hasn't had his eyeballs checked in a while.
It doesn't matter to me that we're just taking about reading glasses, which are a normal appendage of middle and old age. My point is that that he
hasn't had his eyeballs checked in some time. That he wants to be a pilot is actually secondary to age in this regard. There are certain things that should be pretty much automatic once we get to middle age, and annual eye exams are one of them.
By an
eye exam, I don't mean reading the eye chart at the DMV. I mean some professional actually examining the eyeballs, including a glaucoma screening, retinal exam, and whatever else it is they look for using those drops that dilate your pupils and make you see blurry for the rest of the day.
I live in NYS, where most optometrists are licensed to diagnose eye diseases, prescribe drugs, and perform full eye exams. But because their overhead and insurance are much lower, a
routine eye exam from an optometrist costs a lot less than one from an ophthalmologist.
The optometrist I use was recommended by my PCP and is very thorough. She charges me $92.00 for an annual eye exam, including a new reading glass prescription if I need it, which I think is a pretty darned good deal. New patients pay a bit more, I think an even hundred bucks.
Mind you, that's a hundred bucks
a year. We're talking about roughly a hundred bucks
a year to protect your
eyesight. I plan to put that much down on a 5-year-old gelding in the seventh at Aqueduct tomorrow.
So yeah, it seems strange to me that a middle-aged or older guy hasn't gotten his eyeballs looked at in a while, just on general principles, just because he likes being able to see. With good eyeball exams available on the cheap, not getting one at least once a year does seem negligent and unwise to me.
Good on you, though, for helping him to see the light (pun intended).
-Rich