I really love the NHS

I was wondering whether it would be more cost effective to have 14-yo's eyes tested and buy new specs for him in the US or the UK. In the end, I decided to wait till we got to the UK. I'm so glad I did.

True, the eye test was in a rather dingy and small room, and wasn't as thorough as in the US, where you have drops put in, photos taken, air puffed at you, and who know what else. It was just with one person, whereas in the US, the preliminary stuff is done by an assistant, until the moment comes when The Ophthalmologist arrives and finishes the process. True, we'll wait a week or so for the glasses, whereas in the US it's usually 2 or 3 days. True, the display of frames wasn't in a spacious showroom, and it was all a bit cramped. I expect if I was American, I'd have thought it was rather shabby and I wouldn't have liked perching on a small chair in the corner while they measured 14-yo's forehead, and the whole experience might have seemed rather... what's the word?... can't think... well, just not very swish.

However, there were huge advantages. The NHS paid for the test, and then gave us a voucher to spend on glasses. Boots will then give you a child's pair of glasses for free (the NHS voucher covers some of the cost, and Boots subsidises the rest). But because Boots also had a buy one get one free offer, we decided to use the voucher towards adult frames, and we walked out having chosen two pairs of prescription glasses (one plain, one sunglasses), with all the fancy non-scratch coating and other stuff that you usually have to pay extra for, for 62 GB pounds. How fabulous is that? Very fabulous, that's how fabulous. Very fabulous indeed, when I think that in the US, because eye care isn't covered by our insurance, I've spent over $200 on an eye test for a child. Then when I've actually had to buy glasses, it's been at least $200 a pair.

Another issue is that anything health-related always takes so long in the US. It's partly because they're so thorough, but I can't help suspecting that part of it is because you need to feel the cost is justified. A lot of the time seems to be spent in moving you from one suite of rooms to another, leaving you to wait, considerable peering at computer screens and checking your details, researching different costs of lenses according to their thickness and lightness, and getting you to fill in forms which say "You, oh Ophthalmologist and all who work here, are not liable for anything, anything, anything. I will never sue you, never, never, never, no matter what you do, even if you gouge my eyes out, or deliberately amputate one of my limbs without anaesthetic, or sell my child abroad, or decapitate my husband, I promise I won't sue you, and if I do, you can point to this piece of paper and prove that it wasn't your fault".

We were in and out of Boots in 45 minutes. I didn't fill in a form, beyond my son's name, address in England, and telephone number. The people were friendly and helpful, though clearly very busy.

To sum up: 45 minutes, eye test, two pairs of prescription specs, 62 pounds. Result.

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Raise your glasses

Talking of the Royal Wedding and non sequiturs, I just have to mention at this point that it seems I have been nominated for the MADs awards in THREE categories. Not only Best Writer, and Most Inspiring, as I've already said, but also "Best Blog for Family Fun". I do believe in fun, so thank you to whoever nominated me in that category.

We've all established that England is the place to be if you want a darn good royal event. But I have a question for you. Is it the place to be if you have a 13 year old in need of glasses?

We are coming to England in 3 weeks time. 13-yo needs new glasses, and they're a bit overdue, honestly. It's been more than a year since his last eye test, and he says he's sure his prescription has changed. So now I have a choice. We could try and get an appointment, and choose some new glasses, and hope they arrive in time. But I know what getting an appointment with an opthalmologist can be like. Or we could leave it till we get to England, and get him fixed up over there.

What I need to know is this? Is there going to be a significant saving either way? Has anyone any knowledge of this? Glasses: cheaper in the US or the UK? I'm also wanting to ask if he can get an eye test and/or glasses on the NHS - but I don't want to expose myself to sniggering and chortling. Am I hopelessly out of date even to ask?

Advice please.

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The eyes have it

Enough already with the tea! (See how American I'm becoming. Not only do I know the lingo, but I can bring myself to express a sentiment that surely, surely no honest-to-goodness Brit would ever genuinely feel.) Yes, time to move the blog on to other matters. Life through the eyes of a first grade girl.

Husband and I are very short-sighted. Physically, not metaphorically. Well, probably metaphorically as well, since we moved to America with neither the intention of staying long-term, nor any return strategy. Americans call it 'near-sighted' if you're talking about eyes, and 'short-sighted' if you're talking about a plan. I think we Brits use 'short-sighted' for both. I don't think we really use the term 'near-sighted'. Oh my goodness, the tolerance that you lovely Bloggy Peeps have for the useless trivia on this blog never fails to astound me.

Anyway, any old way, where was I? Yes. Husband and I are both short-sighted, so no surprise then, that our oldest is already in glasses (he of the perfect teeth, but you can't hope to have everything). 10-yo, has good eyesight, but 6-yo has been complaining about having blurry vision, so I thought we should get her eyes tested. I did take the blurry vision with a pinch of salt though, since there's no evidence that she can't see perfectly well (and her teacher confirmed this). It also just so happens that her best friend's Dad is an optician (or whatever the longer, more complicated term that we're meant to use these days is) and her best friend has just got glasses.

In fact it turns out that glasses are all the rage for girls in first grade. They are desirable, sought after, coveted, fashionable. We have come a long way since my day, when glasses were to be dreaded, and delayed until no amount of screwing up of your eyes could get you to make out the teacher's scrawl on the blackboard. But then glasses are so much better. No more those heavy lenses in unattractive NHS plastic frames, where your only choice was pink, blue, white or tortoiseshell. These days, glasses are lightweight, comfortable, attractive - easy on the eyes in all senses.

So we went along to the optician, and 6-yo had the full range of tests, one small part of which, these days, is reading some letters off a display. When it got to that part, 6-yo managed the big letter at the top confidently, and then stopped. The optician clicked to make the chart bigger... and then bigger... and then bigger... but even when the letters were all huge, 6-yo sat in silence. "Uh oh", I thought, "she's foxing. She really does want to wear glasses. How are we going to get past this?" The optician tried another set of letters, and again, 6-yo managed the first letter, but stalled at the second row, and sat in silence, no matter how much larger the optician made them. She tried one more chart. Still the same pattern - the reading of the first letter and then no more. At this point, 6-yo gave a small shrug and said "I don't think I know these words".

Because in first grade, they're still doing words like about, and under, and should, and they haven't got onto more difficult ones like zfdax, and lvceno. Shame on them.

Well, it turned out that 6-yo has a very slight prescription, but only very slight. The nice optician said they could certainly make up glasses for us, but he said that quite honestly, our best bet was to go to Claire's in the mall, where you can buy non-prescription glasses for $10.00. So that's what we did (and in fact they were $8.50). The upside of this strategy is that we have saved probably a couple of hundred dollars. The downside is that 6-yo now knows of the existence of Claire's, a knowledge which so far I had deliberately kept away from her innocent mind. However, that aside, it was a happy solution. The frames are dark blue, with tiny flowers on them. 6-yo is thrilled with them, and I nearly die of cute attack every time she puts them on. She wears them to school, having sworn me to secrecy on the fact that they're non-prescription (which is the term we prefer to the unkind and metaphysically incorrect 'not real'). She's made a sneaky discovery since she's had them. Turns out that at least one other bespectacled first grade girl is wearing non-prescriptions too. Sshhh...

Cell buy date

I went shopping last night with 12-yo and bought him a cell phone (mobile phone) for Christmas. It’s been one of those issues over which I’ve felt such a parent. You know the kind of thing. He just wants one, wants one, wants one, and Husband and I are thinking “he only wants one because his friends all have one, he’ll probably lose it at school, what is he going to DO with it for heaven’s sake? why will he need to text his friends when he’s going to see them the next morning and what can they possibly have to say to each other anyway? and they’re so expensive, is he really going to want to spend ALL his pocket money on phone calls? Is he going to have enough money, or are WE going to pay for them?” I tried fishing back into my childhood, to find something equivalent, to try and remember what it felt like to be 12 years old and wanting something so badly, but I drew a blank. Maybe it was a different era.

Getting your first cell phone is something of a rite of passage. These days, young men can't really head out with their spears to kill their first animal, and I suppose it is fitting that in a society dominated by consumerism and technology, the purchase of a cell phone has come to represent a significant moment on the journey to adulthood. 12-yo had done his research: Verizon, T-mobile, AT&T. He’d collected leaflets, printed out pages from websites, compared tariffs. He persuaded me that AT&T was the best, because the two friends who he’ll be calling most have AT&T, and so he would get free calls to them. Conclusive argument, I had to agree.

It’s a bit like buying what 13 years ago was called a 'pram' or a 'pushchair', in the days when a 'travel system' was the Chicago El or the London Underground. The shop assistant said to you “what you need depends on your lifestyle”, and you were thinking “I don’t KNOW what my lifestyle is going to be like when I have a baby”. In the same way, the very helpful AT&T man was describing the 8,000 different plans to choose between, and was saying “what you need depends on how you’re going to use the phone”, and I was thinking “he doesn’t KNOW how he’s going to use the phone”.

We ended up with a compromise. I didn’t buy him the $300 (on special offer at $200) touch screen latest model, which is flying off the shelves so fast that I was going to have to leave my name and number and he was going to contact me the moment the next consignment came in. But I also didn’t buy him the $30 clunky model that makes even my aged phone look impressive. There was a fortunate half-way house that just happened to be on special offer (was it really, or do the sales assistants have the flexibility to invent a story at the last minute when the sniff of a sale is getting stronger?) It was a phone with a keyboard – which 12-yo assured me was vital, though I couldn’t really see how anyone except an elf would have small enough fingers to use it. The usual price was $100, but I paid $80, and $50 of that was given as credit to 12-yo for calls, bringing the ‘real’ price down to the same as the clunky $30. So everyone was happy. The sales assistant made a sale, 12-yo got a phone and $50 to spend on calls and texts, and I came away feeling I'd managed to avoid paying a complete fortune whilst also avoiding being as hopelessly luddite as I'm sure my son feared I would be.

In the middle of the purchase, 12-yo was looking at the phone and asked “how do you get to use the camera?” and I cringed inside and steeled myself, for I knew that the phone didn’t have a camera, and that being told so would be both a disappointment and a humiliation. I wanted to whisk him out of the store in the blink of an eye, explain the no-camera situation, and then run back in, and say to the assistant “let’s just rewind 45 seconds and pretend he didn’t ask that question, shall we?” But as I was cringing and steeling, a most strange thing happened. The assistant was taking the phone in his own hand and saying “you go down to Tools on this menu, and press OK, and then see, it says Camera, so you press OK, and there you are… Good to go”. Sometimes not being omniscient has its upside.

As we left, 12-you said to me “you were looking a bit sad in there. Were you ok? Or were you just thinking how I’m growing up?” I’m glad he displays such pinpoint precision in locating maternal feelings, because pinpoint precision is what he's going to need when it comes to the elf keyboard. I assured him that yes, I was thinking about how he’s growing up, but that no, I wasn’t sad. And I really wasn’t. It’s just the next thing.

So far, he has two contacts in his phone. Mum (“Shall I call you Mum or Iota?” “Call me Mum, I think”) and Tiny, the AT&T sales assistant (“if you’re having any problems, you can just text me and I’ll try and help”). And here’s the difference. I am Mum. It’s my name for 3 people in this world, and it’s also what I am. Whereas Tiny…

Yesterday was a big day for 12-yo. He also had an eye test that revealed what he suspected, ie that he needs glasses (it’s in the genes, poor kid had no chance). So tonight we’re going to go and choose frames. Phones and frames. It’s all happening at once. I can’t keep up.

And here’s one more little Mum moment. What 12-yo doesn’t remember, or maybe never knew, is that before the other two came along, I used to sign off missives to family “A,T&T”, because at that time, that’s who we were (Iota’s not my real name, you know). So secretly, I’m quite pleased he’s with them, though come to think of it, T-mobile would be very appropriate too.

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Intermission - but please read

Recently (within the past 2 or 3 months) I read a post on a US mommy blog which encouraged parents to take advantage of a scheme in the US which subsidises eye tests for children. I made a mental note of it, and thought "if I don't remember the details, I can always google it". Sadly, google hasn't helped me with this one.

Was it YOU who wrote that post? Or can you remember where it was, if you read it too? The scheme had a snappy and memorable name like I can see, or Can you see?, or Eyes R Us. Snappy but, as it turns out, not terribly memorable.

Mommy-brain, mommy-brain, mommy-brain...