The Eye Doctor in Mexico

As I look outside my office window, with the swirling snow and howling wind, I can only think of one thing.  Mexico.

Living in Tucson had its perks and Mexico was one of them.  It was about a 50 minute drive to the border town of Nogales.  There are some really neat landmarks along the way.  At the south end of Tucson is a beautiful old mission, built in 1700, that stands on the Tohono O'odham American Indian reservation.  A few miles south of that is Green Valley, Arizona, and you're pretty much only welcome there if you are over the age of 65.  Lots of golf carts.  A little farther down the road is the Titan Missile Museum.  We always meant to stop there and take a tour, but never did.  There were 54 Titan (nuclear) Missiles buried under parts of Kansas, Arkansas and Arizona, and were deactivated by the SALT treaty, yet this one stays open now as a museum.  A little more south are the Santa Rita Mountains, and the Madera Canyon with some of the best bird-watching around.  You drive a little more and you'll see Border Patrol, and not long after that you come upon the very hilly, busy town of Nogales.  There's a Nogales, Arizona and a Nogales, Mexico.  You park on the Arizona side in a big municipal lot, and walk across.  We've never driven across and we've never been there after dark.  Two fairly important points.

I love bargains and so I love Mexico.  It's pretty amazing to be able to walk into any pharmacy (and some of them look more like a closet than a pharmacy) and be able to purchase medications without a prescription.   I had heard of a lot of Arizonans going to Mexico to get dental work done, because it was significantly less expensive.  When Krystal told me she needed new contacts, I researched what using our eye insurance would cost, versus paying cash in Mexico.  As I said, I love a bargain, and so off to Nogales the two of us went.

We had to go out of the touristy areas (which made me a bit nervous) to find any eye doctors.  We went to a couple of offices, and either the doctor wasn't in, or they didn't do contacts.  The streets were getting busier, absolutely no English was being spoken, and we were venturing farther and farther away from the areas we knew.  I was beginning to wonder if this was such a great idea, and that maybe we should have just used our insurance.  Finally we found another clinic.  The receptionist spoke good English, and there was a Latina woman and her daughter who were well dressed and alternated between English and Spanish and sounded like they lived in Tucson, too, so then I was sold.  They called us to a room.  The doctor spoke English to us, exchanged a few pleasantries and then reached right into Krystal's eye and pulled her contacts out of her eyes.  She looked at me and I looked at her.  I thought to myself, oh no, what is this man going to do next?  Technically we are in a foreign country, and truthfully my Spanish isn't very good, and if I called 911 (if they even had 911) I could not even tell them what street we were on.  Thankfully it didn't come to that and the rest of the appointment followed the customs we were used to and we were left to think that although Mexicans may seem laid back with their siestas and all, maybe not Mexican eye doctors. The doctor and the staff were actually very nice, and I prepaid for the contacts, which they said they would ship to us once they came in.  And sure enough, they did.

I just saw the eye doctor six months ago here in St. Louis, and already feel like my prescription needs tweaking.  I wish I could just zip on down to Mexico right now.  I would go to the very same clinic, and this time prepare myself for the 'taking out of the contacts'.  Maybe Krystal could come down with me from Phoenix.  And maybe we could drink a delicious margarita afterwards and go bargain for a nice purse or two.