I Can’t See For Miles
I made an appointment with my eye doc today. It will be the 16 month follow-up to the cataract surgery on my left eye and the beginning of me lobbying to get the right eye done as well. A person my age doesn’t normally have to deal with these things but in my family the parts start wearing out early. I don’t want my vision to deteriorate to the point it got to last time where I was hardly reading anything I didn’t have to read for work, had trouble driving, couldn’t read menus in restaurants and viewed everything through a haze not unlike what your world would look like if you took a pair of eyeglasses and smeared butter all over them.
The surgery itself is no big deal. You’re awake but high as a kite on valium as they destroy your lens with sound waves, suck it out with a needle and pop a new plastic one in its place that happens to be farsighted. Well, the one I got happens to be farsighted because the newer ones that adjust to your eye are still experimental and aren’t covered by my insurance. So now I wear reading glasses, no big deal. At least I can read again, though my pace has been backsliding a bit leading to my desire to get the other eye done.
I don’t like making doctor appointments though. I find that once you get past 40 you rarely get the old “Hey, everything’s great, see you in a year” bit. Last time I saw my GP he said “There are a lot of little things wrong with you that’ll have to be addressed but nothing major yet”. That’s the sort of thing a person who is probably more aware of his own mortality than is normal wants to hear, isn’t it? Makes you think that every time you pick up the phone you’re starting a chain of events that leads to more appointments, more tests, more treatments and ultimately failure and a nice car ride in a box.
But hey, it’s not all bad.
Mortality consciousness it does have an upside. It reminds you to try to enjoy every day or at least part of every day that you’re alive and free of the medical-industrial-complex. It makes you take more joy out of every happy occasion like the big Robbie Burns dinner at the ol’ curling club on Saturday night. The glow of a great party like that can carry you for a couple days when you know the clock is running, always running, always wearing away at your meat and bones.
And hey, now that I’ve written this little piece if anything bad comes out of my next doctor visit my friends that read this can all say “Wow man, it’s like he KNEW….you know?” I love crap like that. But let me say no, I don’t know anything.
“He’s just saying that man…he KNOWS…”
No, really, I don’t. But it does crack me up when people do stuff like that. That’s why I almost inevitably wrap up any pre-vacation meeting with my staff by saying “So I’ll be back on the (whatever date) unless my plane goes down in a giant fireball” or “Unless I drive off the road and die with a steering wheel embedded in my sternum”. I get a double-kick out of that thinking that if some ill does befall me they’ll be creeped out and knowing that by just SAYING that some people get creeped out. I love the “You don’t say something bad might happen because it’ll make something bad happen” superstition. Really? Like if there’s a supreme being he/she/it is listening to me out of four billion other people at that very moment and is going to expend some supernatural capital just to teach me a lesson because that’s the biggest injustice going on in the world right now? That makes sense to you?
You know, I bet it does. You and I, we’re only human. Superstition is a way of controlling the uncontrollable. Without our tics and superstitions, the world would be a very scary place. The knowledge that your continued existence on this planet is in large part based on factors completely out of your control is terrifying. Knowing that, for instance, a jet plane missed smashing into your building and probably killing you by a quarter mile and instead executed a safe landing in a spot in the Hudson that you can see from a window around the corner might freak you out if you let it.
Don’t worry. I didn’t. I’m OK with knowing that I might never see the end coming.
Tune in next time dear reader for some more observations on contemporary life. That is, assuming my bus doesn’t hit an icy patch and spin down into the icy depths of the Narrows or get crushed by a terrible collapse in the tunnel.
The surgery itself is no big deal. You’re awake but high as a kite on valium as they destroy your lens with sound waves, suck it out with a needle and pop a new plastic one in its place that happens to be farsighted. Well, the one I got happens to be farsighted because the newer ones that adjust to your eye are still experimental and aren’t covered by my insurance. So now I wear reading glasses, no big deal. At least I can read again, though my pace has been backsliding a bit leading to my desire to get the other eye done.
I don’t like making doctor appointments though. I find that once you get past 40 you rarely get the old “Hey, everything’s great, see you in a year” bit. Last time I saw my GP he said “There are a lot of little things wrong with you that’ll have to be addressed but nothing major yet”. That’s the sort of thing a person who is probably more aware of his own mortality than is normal wants to hear, isn’t it? Makes you think that every time you pick up the phone you’re starting a chain of events that leads to more appointments, more tests, more treatments and ultimately failure and a nice car ride in a box.
But hey, it’s not all bad.
Mortality consciousness it does have an upside. It reminds you to try to enjoy every day or at least part of every day that you’re alive and free of the medical-industrial-complex. It makes you take more joy out of every happy occasion like the big Robbie Burns dinner at the ol’ curling club on Saturday night. The glow of a great party like that can carry you for a couple days when you know the clock is running, always running, always wearing away at your meat and bones.
And hey, now that I’ve written this little piece if anything bad comes out of my next doctor visit my friends that read this can all say “Wow man, it’s like he KNEW….you know?” I love crap like that. But let me say no, I don’t know anything.
“He’s just saying that man…he KNOWS…”
No, really, I don’t. But it does crack me up when people do stuff like that. That’s why I almost inevitably wrap up any pre-vacation meeting with my staff by saying “So I’ll be back on the (whatever date) unless my plane goes down in a giant fireball” or “Unless I drive off the road and die with a steering wheel embedded in my sternum”. I get a double-kick out of that thinking that if some ill does befall me they’ll be creeped out and knowing that by just SAYING that some people get creeped out. I love the “You don’t say something bad might happen because it’ll make something bad happen” superstition. Really? Like if there’s a supreme being he/she/it is listening to me out of four billion other people at that very moment and is going to expend some supernatural capital just to teach me a lesson because that’s the biggest injustice going on in the world right now? That makes sense to you?
You know, I bet it does. You and I, we’re only human. Superstition is a way of controlling the uncontrollable. Without our tics and superstitions, the world would be a very scary place. The knowledge that your continued existence on this planet is in large part based on factors completely out of your control is terrifying. Knowing that, for instance, a jet plane missed smashing into your building and probably killing you by a quarter mile and instead executed a safe landing in a spot in the Hudson that you can see from a window around the corner might freak you out if you let it.
Don’t worry. I didn’t. I’m OK with knowing that I might never see the end coming.
Tune in next time dear reader for some more observations on contemporary life. That is, assuming my bus doesn’t hit an icy patch and spin down into the icy depths of the Narrows or get crushed by a terrible collapse in the tunnel.
Comments
It's a possibility. Seems like only a month ago you thought that the calls were coming from inside your computer.