Cataract Surgery - one down, one to go

At the start of last year I noticed I was tending to polish my glasses a lot, as the right hand lens often seemed to be a bit smudged. So I wasn't particularly surprised when the optometrist confirmed during an eye test last March that I was developing a cataract in my right eye*. I'd also noticed an obstruction when viewing pistol shooting targets in bright light when the aperture of my shooting glasses was reduced to less than a mm. It looked a bit like a piece of fluff or organic growth in the middle of the shooting glasses aperture...

Anyhow, I put up with my right eye's vision getting progressively less clear (especially in bright light) until March this year, when I decided to get a referral from my GP to an opthamologist. In the initial check-up last month it was confirmed that I had a pretty advanced cataract in my right eye, and there were early signs of it also developing in my left eye (but so far not affecting the vision noticeably). So I decided to go ahead and get cataract surgery done on both eyes (the operation replaces the lens inside each eye, so will correct my distance vision (I currently need bifocals as I've always been short-sighted, and in recent years also had difficulty focussing on computer screens - my natural range of clear focus was restricted to about 8cm-30cm!).

I had the operation on my right eye last Monday afternoon, and was back at work on Tuesday and had a check-up on Tuesday afternoon. The results were pretty amazing - my distance vision in my right eye is now very bright and clear (better than in my left eye wearing glasses) and is pretty good down to about 2m away. Closer than that it is still in sharp focus, but unfortunately it is blurred with multiple images at close range. Hopefully that will be correctly by getting new 'reading glasses' once my left eye operation has been done in a couple of week's time.

The operation on my right eye cost about $2400, with a refund from medicare of almost $800 leaving me $1600 'out of pocket'. The day surgery private hospital fee also cost around $2000, but was fully refunded by the private health insurance provided by my employer. I expect I'll also get a bill of around $700 from the anaesthetist, but will get some of that refunded by the private health cover and medicare.

The operation on my left eye later this month will cost similar amounts, although I'll get a larger proportion of the $2400 surgeon bill refunded by medicare (due to reaching some 'threshold' amount of 'out of pocket' annual expenses).

So, the whole process has been quite successful (so far), rather expensive (even with full private health cover) and fairly painless. I could have opted to get the surgery done in a 'public hospital' under medicare, but there still would have been some 'gap' payments due, a 6-12 month waiting list for this 'elective' surgery, and no choice of surgeon. And of course in the public hospital system there are always a chance that your operation will be part of the training of a new surgeon, which increases the chances of a less than ideal outcome. Overall, when it comes to having knives inserted into my eyes, I'm happy to spend a bit more in order to maximize the probability of a good outcome!

* I'm a bit young to be getting cataracts, but a lifetime of topical steroid medications for severe eczema was a known risk factor.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2017

Ouch, That hurt my wallet (and my mouth

Had a 'fun' day off work yesterday - got some fasting blood tests done in the morning (covered by Medicare), in preparation for my visit to the eczema/immunology specialist in two weeks time. And then had an after lunch session with the dentist to get a premolar tooth extracted (it had two previously rounds of expensive root canal therapy by two different dentists, which didn't fix the problem).

I was told the extraction would take about an hour, but I ended up being in the 'chair' for almost two hours. Aside from some small pricks getting the initial local anesthetic injections, the whole proceed was quite painless, although uncomfortably. It involved the tooth extraction, 'grafting', a few stiches, and then an x-ray to check the final result. I'll be going back for a short visit in a couple of weeks to get the few stitches removed. This two hour marathon session cost just under A$1000, but at least there was a lot of time, effort and materials involved. A large proportion of the bill was covered by my employer-funded health plan, so my 'out of pocket' was under A$200.

There was somewhat greater pain involved when the local wore off. I'm on soft/liquid foods only for a couple of days, and taking some pain-killers today. Hopefully it will have 'settled down' by tomorrow morning.

Later in the year I'll need to have some more expensive work done to insert a 'prosthetic' tooth in the gap. Makes me wish I'd done a bit more cleaning and flossing of my teeth during the past forty years!

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Sick Little Boy

DS2 had a bit of a cough on Friday, lost his appetite and went to bed early witha slight temperature and diarrhoea. We gave him some Paracetamol to ease his temperature, but it was up again during the night and he was still a bit feverish and grumpy this morning so we visited out family GP for a check-up. It appears to be viral rather than bacterial, so we are just continuing with the Panadol every 4 hours and adjusting his diet until he recovers in a day or two. [He was already a lot better this afternoon].

The GP consultation cost $55.00, but since Medicare has been advised to automatically pay the medicare refund of $32.80 by EFT into my bank account, the consult will end up costing $22.20 out of pocket.

There was also a $5.90 expense to buy some infant Panadol drops from the Pharmacy, but as this counts towards my total "out of pocket" medical expenses for the financial year, the 20% net medical expenses tax offset (available for the out of pocket amount above the threshold of $1,500) will give me a small part of this expense back via my tax refund.

The visit to the doctor reminded me that I still had some unclaimed expenses from three appointments with DS1's pediatric asthma specialist last August, October and December. So I visited the medicare office and obtained a cash refund of $300.85 based on the $395.00 expense. The remaining $94.15 (and the $22.20 from today's GP visit) will also count towards the threshold for the net medical expenses tax offset this financial year.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007