Eye Costs

I recently had a problem with my glasses. They're rubbing on the back of my head. I know that sounds like I'm wearing them the wrong way, doing some sort of silly Eric Morcombe routine, but it's the bit behind the ear that seems to press in and hurt. I'm resourceful though, so I set about using a boiling kettle and some grips to bend the offending arm into a beter position. Turns out I'm not very good at glasses DIY.

It's OK though, I just have to wear my contact lenses more. But here's a worrying figure. If you wear certain types of contact lenses starting in your mid-twenties across the rest of your life you will spend tens of thousands on contact lenses. Don't get me wrong, I like to see, but I don't want to be poor with good vision.

I never thought of LASIK procedures as a money-saver, but they are. When compared to the lifetime spend on contacts you're making a big saving. All it means is that you have a bigger cost upfront so that you can avoid a much larger cost overall. You don't have to have 20-20 vision to see that's a good idea.

I have been looking at www.iLASIK.com to see what it is all about. It's very high-tech these days. They use a wavefront mapping technology that uses coherent laser light to map the topology of the eye. It's like the laser scans you see on CSI when they want to have a computer representation of an object in 3D. And when they have the map of your eye the operation can be tailor-made. They then sculpt the eye into a shape where the light will be perfectly focused on the retina. See, I've been learning.

If you want to see more (oh, there's a good pun there) check out the website www.iLASIK.com.

• Dated Thursday, June 25, 2009