Socorro Family Eyes are the window to health

It’s been said that the eyes are the windows to a person’s soul. For Dr. Laura County, optometrist at and owner of Socorro Family Eye Care, the eyes are also a window into a person’s overall health.

“The eyes are connected to the rest of the body, of course, and it’s the only place in the body where you can see blood vessels without making an incision,” Dr. County said. “So we can tell a lot about the health of the rest of the organs in the body and the rest of the tissues by looking in the eyes.”

Many individuals and new parents are advised that regular visits to a primary care physician and a dentist are recommended as a part of routine healthcare, but Dr. County has noticed that not as many people know that routine optometry visits are just as important.

Dr. County said she thinks people aren’t prone to visit an eye doctor unless they think something is wrong, and by then certain eye diseases are already in an advanced state, such as glaucoma, cataracts, muscular degeneration and other age-related diseases.

“Glaucoma is called the silent thief of sight because it’s a condition where sometimes high pressure in the eye damages the nerve that takes information back to the brain and it affects your peripheral vision, and that’s not something that we (patients)notice is disappearing until about 50% of it is gone,” Dr. County said.

So far, the youngest patient the practice has served was nine days old, and the oldest over 100 years young. Regular eye exams don’t only catch changes in vision, they can also be the first appointment where early signs of juvenile diabetes are detected.

“We do all ages comprehensive care,” Dr. County said. “We’ll see people for their regular eye exams, annual eye exams, where we can look for things like diabetes and effects of high blood pressure on the eyes, and when people take certain medications, we have to watch for toxicity. And then we also do kind of more problem focused exams. So if someone gets something in their eye, they can come see me and I’ll take it out and take care of them.”

The practice takes most major medical insurances, Dr. County said. She also said that sometimes it can be intimidating to call a medical office for a first appointment, but that her team is happy to listen to people’s concerns and guide them through the process of making an appointment and billing applicable insurance providers.

Dr. County’s team includes six women.

“All of them are local, and for me, it’s really important to have a strong team that supports each other,” Dr. County said. “We hire based on personality, because everything else is trainable. And I want to maintain a nice working environment and a good culture, because when patients come in, they feel that my staff is very welcoming. And we want everybody who comes in here to feel like family.”

Dr. County was raised in Socorro and attended Tech out of high school where she obtained her pharmacist technician certificate. After working in a pharmacy for a year, Dr. County realized she wanted to do something more hands-on. Her co-worker told her if he could do it all again he would have gone into optometry.

She followed his guidance and enrolled at and graduated from the University of Houston.

“Vision is, to me, the most precious sight,” Dr. County said. “80% of learning comes from vision. We rely so much on our eyes, and we don’t even realize it. So, to help people see the beauty around the is really rewarding.”