Following my recent article titled "Building a reserve supply of prescription medications", reader Spark21 sent me an e-mail pointing out that medical devices, such as spectacles and contact lenses, should be included as well. I thought my readers might be interested in it, too.
You had a recent article on building up a reserve of prescription meds.
As a person who also prepares for thing and used to be in the business (my current career is in law enforcement), I would like to add something you may wish to use or share with your readers:
Contacts and glasses.
Glasses and contacts may be found for low cost at Costco, Sam's, Walmart, and a few smaller opticals. During a SHTF time, having spare prescription glasses and/or contacts is a huge must!
I will focus on contacts here and my personal experience. I am not a doctor, nor an optical specialist.
I have found that daily contacts, weekly, and monthly contacts (standard and for astigmatism) are made the exact same way, just packaged differently. If you clean contacts daily, regardless of the type (daily, monthly, yearly), I have been able to get up to more than a month of wear from a single pair.
Now, if you get a prescription for contacts (ask your optometrist for a daily wear prescription), go to a place like Coscto or 1800contacts (online) and price your contacts for a years supply of daily wear lenses. Now order via the best cost method and store them in a room temp or slightly cooler space. If you do like I have found, your 'daily wear' lenses can last months and your years worth of lenses can be stretched to several years of use (or more!).
Now over the years I have had a dry out rate of stored lenses about 10%-12%. And you must keep cleaning solution on hand as well. I use Costco/Kirkland for the price and no one bats an eye at bulk purchases at Costco.
I personally ran this experiment for just under six years. I am on my next about grouping in which there are two years worth of 'daily' units for testing until I retire in about six years.
For glasses: any older frames that are in good condition get new lenses for a small fee. I also make sure to have minimum five pair on hand (I currently have 11). I use contacts normally, but keep glasses in my car kit, bug out bag, office, and at the homes of a few family members and friends.
Good advice from Spark21, for which my grateful thanks. I don't need prescription glasses for normal everyday use, but I use reading glasses, plus a couple of computer glasses with special focus and tint needs. I'll plan to stock up on those things.
Peter
9 comments:
Prescription eyewear is a critical "prep good."
So are a lot of other things. The simplest way I have found to identify and track all that stuff is to perform a SWOT Analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.
Building a SWOT Analysis will not be done in 30 minutes, it will take - probably - a couple weeks and a lot of discussion (Pro Tip: the kids have opinions and may offer them but they are not voting members, the parents are) to get a detailed document. Which will require periodic review and updating. I'd suggest monthly at first, for about six months, then quarterly.
No item, process or requirement is too small to include and have a priority assigned to it, and in the periodic reviews some of those priorities will change. The important things are an opportunity to identify requirements, everything from waterproof matches to physical and mental fitness to NATO fuel cans fo automotive fuel and medical skills.
For cheap eyeglasses, Zenni Optical can't be beat. A friend of mine having worked as an optician for many years, I've long been familiar with the exorbitant markup (almost all the frames in the US come from the same company) that applies even at your cheapest discount eyewear places.
Zenni offers a wide selection of frames, but for the this purpose, they have several dozen options that sell for $6.95 - with prescription! No add-ons like anti-reflective, scratch resistance, high index lenses (if you're like me the lenses will look like coke bottle bottoms) but they're durable and well made. My former optician friend gave them the thumbs up.
Since I wear contacts, but am functionally blind without correction, the price lets me buy them in bulk and keep them stashed in every vehicle, and in all my luggage, extra pair in tool boxes, range bag, etc.
I usually order them 8-10 at a time as there's a flat $4 shipping on each order.
And, if you want to go fancy with bi-focals, all the lens options etc. they can do them at a fraction of the cost.
I used to help my uncle and cousins scrounge for car and old tractor parts in that area. Uncle restored Fords and old tractors as a hobby.
BTW, Wednesday is the 45th anniversary of the Red River Valley tornado outbreak. Parts of the area looked like a war zone for months afterwards.
If you wear gas-permeable or "hard" lenses, please be careful about trying to extend their lifetime for too long: I once had a scratched cornea from wearing hard contact lenses with deposits and scratches on them. That's a painful injury (though thankfully it didn't cause any permanent eye damage). I now wear soft disposable lenses and it's true that you don't have to throw them away every day, but check with an optometrist to ensure you're not wearing them for too long and that you're cleaning and storing them correctly. (Also, rinse out your contact lens case daily with very hot water to disinfect it.)
I have picked up stronger mag reading glasses than I currently wear at Costco as I can afford them now and will need them in the future.
+1 for Zenni. We have two special needs kids that break glasses often. We can get “good enough” glasses there for around $30 each.
Oh, and having prescription sunglasses is amazing. My script is much stronger than my two boys, but even polarized continuous bifocals with all the bells and whistles are $110
I second the Zenni recommendation. I have several sets of the $6.95 glasses (simple prescription that hasn't changed noticeably in about 20 years). Plus I have a couple of pair of prescription safety glasses that were less expensive than getting a normal pair of glasses anywhere else.
I have been using zenni for more than 15 years.. never had a bad experience.
Each time I get my prescription, every couple to four years, I purchase one high end set up glasses from them.. titanium frames, progressive lenses, all the coatings, best I can get.. usually about 110 dollars. The better lenses with anti scratch and anti reflective coatings really make a difference, at least for me, also I now get the auto sunglass coating, can't remember what it's called off the top of my head. However I don't get the name brand version. They are just to dark and if you wear them for years it makes your eyes so light sensitive that full sunlight starts to hurt your eyes. They have a new brand name version that only shades about half as much which for me seems to hit the spot...
Then I get 3 or 4 other sets of the cheaper ones at the same time, prescription sunglasses to leave in the car or cars and a basic daily driver pair in case something happens to the nice ones. All told my bill is usually about 160 to 200 every 3 or 4 years. As cheap as they were, early on I purchased different frames for different occasions :) but found that I'm just not that kinda guy and went with my daily driver glasses regardless, so a bit of a waste of 50 dollars for 3 or 4 pairs at the time. However I have noticed that this is something the ladies love to do if they can afford it, and with zenni not many people can't afford it.
Never throw old glasses that are still in good shape away. Even though my prescription for close up has changed a few times in the last decade, even the slightly off distance prescription from 15 years ago still allows me to see close to 20/20. There for I have 10 or 15 sets of cheap glasses as spares going back a while. I used to break them more, but haven't destroyed or lost any in the last decade so t hey have piled up a bit.
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