New Glasses Ordered, Finally

I went for my one-month follow up to the bionic eye surgery from February, and everything appears to be healing on schedule. It's still impossible for me to read small text through my left eye, and while that functionality may never return, the doctor definitely did not want to write a prescription for reading glasses, as my right eye is fine for reading and my left eye should only get better when put to the task.

So I departed with another appointment in six months and a revised prescription for my left eye, as I expected I would.

I drove to the optical shop that they recommended in Braintree, King Optical, and found a small storefront off of a main road, yet amidst residential properties. I walked in, and the smell of elderly overtook me - the same smell that I experienced at the location of the cataract surgery. Another place where time stood still. Clearly, I was not recommended to visit the hippest optical shop in the area.

Nonetheless, I presented them with my dilemma. I had a pair of Eyephorics frames that weren't exactly cheap. I also had a pair of Oakleys that were prescription, but had been repaired poorly by another optical shop. I hoped to purchase a new left lens for each pair.

As my super nice 77-year old front-desk clerk walked my glasses to the back, I sat in the waiting room enjoying Jay Leno as a guest on The View, which appears to be shooting on location somewhere sunny and tropical this week.

Shortly thereafter, another older gentleman walked me into a small office and told me that he had both good and bad news. He said the Oakleys wouldn't be a problem, and he could even repair the shabby repair work of whoever "fixed" them last time (an arm broke off, I delivered them to an optical shop on Beacon St. in Kenmore Square, and I was returned a pair of glasses obviously uneven and with lenses that did not properly fit into the frames, leaving much room around the lenses - I don't even know why I accepted them back). The total cost would be about $110 for two new lenses and squaring away the frames. Excellent! Whatever oldness permeates King Optical is fine by me - I'm chalking it up to wisdom and years of experience.

He would not be able to help with the Eyephorics, though, as they did not carry them and their construction made for a difficult repair - so much so that when I brought them to Lens Crafters about an hour later, the salesperson informed me that they repair all kinds of glasses...but not the Eyephorics I showed her. In fact, she told me that they would be impossible to repair altogether.

Grrr. Impossible, I thought. Impossible isn't always impossible.

I called the shop where I purchased them, Studio Optics on Berkeley St., probably something I should have done from the start. They said the repair was indeed possible and would run me $108.

Here I'm thinking I am going to need an entirely new pair of prescription Oakleys, and after leaving Lens Crafters, thought I would need a whole new pair of Eyephorics. I'm assuming if I bought those frames new and had two new prescription lenses put into each, I'd be about $650-$700 in the hole.

Instead, it looks like I'm skating by with just about $220 out of pocket. Whew.