The Occasional Joke


Nurse: Patient's name?

Centurion: Marcus Licinius Crassus

Nurse: And his date of birth?

Centurion: 115 BC.

Nurse: All right. And what is he here for?

Centurion: Cataphract surgery.


Sunday, October 10, 2010

I hate it ...

... when people gratuitiously give me something to worry about, and I try not to do that to others, myself (like hell you do.) But I guess I'll pass along a worry to my aging colleagues that sure as hell never occurred to me until it smacked me in the eye: random, non-traumatic, you're=just=getting=old retinal detachment. Did you know that your retina could just decide to become detached and aloof? Without anyone punching you or pushing you downstairs or anything like that? I didn't until it did.

The cure, more or less, is an outpatient surgical procedure, involving lasers and other high tech stuff, and it is extremely routine -- it apparently restores "most" sight in the affected eye, "most" of the time. But the recovery process is hugely inconvenient, involving spending days with your head in one of several specific positions for hours at a time.

So -- here's what to worry about: floaters, flashes, dimming, a dark "object" beginning to move into your field of vision. If you note any of that, call your eye doc, ASAP. If it's caught within a day or so, the surgery is simpler and the recovery less annoying. If it goes 48 hours, you're in for the whole schmeer. What puts you at risk? Just being, as I am, older than dirt, apparently. According to the docs, no drug interactions, nothing related to the myeloma, just random behavior of our bodies, of the sort that continues to bias me against the notion of intelligent design.

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