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Chapter 2:

My Solution of Giving the Gift of Sight

“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.”

– Napoleon Hill

I remember that summer day so vividly! I turned 16 and I just survived a major car accident! That Monday, I passed my driver’s test and right away on that Friday, I drove my friends to the movie theatre. On the way there, as I was turning left at an intersection, I heard a loud crash. Thereafter, I was unconscious for a few minutes. When I woke up my car was totaled. Kaput! I realized that my vision was so weak that I did not see the oncoming car as I was turning left. After the car accident, my dad took me to an eye doctor. She said that my vision was 20/400, with a prescription of -3.00.

I was heart-broken! Not only did I damage my first car beyond repair, I also found out that my eyes were so bad that I will be depending on glasses for the rest of my life. My dad was very calm. He was not upset. He turned this dilemma into an opportunity for me. He said, “What if other kids are like you? Can’t see and they don’t even know it? What if you could bring awareness about eye care and prevention? You should work toward a goal to service others like you.” At the age of 16, I started my journey toward the goal of bringing awareness and hopefully prevention of nearsightedness/myopia to children.

Like many eye care providers, I started out providing general optometric services to my patients. These included eye exams, glasses, and contact lenses. The main source of income came from vision insurance companies. Since I started my practice from scratch, there weren’t a lot of patients. Most of my patients then found me through vision insurance company directories and Medicaid services. When starting a practice “cold,” you need to have patience for business to pick up and grow over time. In reality, during the first few years in practice, I found that there were many private practices, similar to mine, that were barely making enough to cover their expenses.

I worked at another practice to supplement the income. After a few years, my practice’s revenue steadily increased and I was able to step away from the part-time job at the other practice. However, I noticed vision insurance companies started to cut their reimbursement to all their eye doctors. In addition, online companies selling glasses and soft contacts for significantly less started to pop up every second. Because of these things, my income was slowly declining with each passing year.

Facing the terrible fear of having to close my practice, I searched desperately for a solution. A call from a friend changed my life completely. Her radio guest speaker cancelled last minute. She thought of me and invited me on the talk show. We sat together to talk about different things in our lives on a live talk show. Somehow, the topic of nearsighted children came up. I told her that I helped my nieces control their nearsightedness with a specialty therapy called Ortho-K. To my surprise, when I got back to my practice, ten minutes later, my office was full of children wearing glasses. Parents wanted to have that specialty therapy for their children so desperately. Since that day, 98 percent of my patients are Ortho-K patients! These parents willingly pay out of pocket to save their children’s eyesight. The initial stage of starting my Ortho-K was not without struggle. I had to face my insecurities about if I was the best doctor to provide this specialty care for these children. However, at that time, there weren’t any doctors who offer this service. If I don’t face my fear and insecurities and step forward and offer this healing therapy, who will?

For years, I continued doing my “homework” in the evening, read and re-read all the literature, and reviewed all the class notes on this topic I took in optometry school. I made numerous calls to all the Ortho-K lens designers ensuring that my patients get the best FDA approved lens material and designs. Day by day, my determination and passion grew. I knew that there is no better gift out there that parents can give their child but the gift of sight. I became so motivated to share this “Magic Therapy” that I wrote weekly articles, talked about it on TV shows and radio shows, held workshops and seminars to bring forth awareness of this sight-saving therapy. To this day, I can say that parents in the local area came to know me as the Pioneer Ortho-K Doctor. The years that followed were even more exciting for me.

At optometric continued education conference and conventions, whenever colleagues learned that I helped children with Ortho-K, they wanted to know more. During lunches and dinners with my colleagues, I would always hear them asking me about “How do you do this?” and “How do you do that?” regarding Ortho-K therapy. Through many follow-up conversations via text messages and phones calls, I have been able to help my colleagues build their own successful Ortho-K practices. The goal of writing this book is to share my journey in building a specialty Ortho-K practice to even more eye care professionals.