❧
The pain I've been experiencing in my back seems to be getting better. It may have been strained muscles from digging the trench I worked on to put the ethernet cable underground. The other problem I created myself by bluntly traumatizing my upper rib cage on the same side of my body trimming underbrush. That didn't help any. Between the two of them I experienced pain any way I turned, especially in bed when I rolled over.
It's not so easy to keep a positive attitude when my body hurts and my e-mail correspondents are publicly pointing out that I'm succumbing to the trials and tribulations of my dotage. Now I have "friends" who want me to clean their house and do their yard work for them. I'm feeling like Rodney Dangerfield.
My real fear in regard to my back trouble has been that it could be kidney problems. There are a lot of medical procedures that can't take place if you got bad kidneys, and the prospect of getting involved with kidney dialysis is not welcome. On the other hand, I'm perfectly aware that eventually I'll get sick of something and die. There is hardly a chance now I'll get killed by a jealous husband.
This coming Thursday I have an appointment with the eye surgeon who will remove the cataracts in my eyes. I'm not anticipating the surgery itself, but hopefully, the successful results thereof. In my opinion I am is better off for having watched all those YouTube videos that show the surgery I'll be getting eventually.
The fact that some sort of blood and gore doesn't come shooting out of the video patient's eyeball when the surgeon cut the outer layer to get to the cataracts was a relief. In several of the videos there wasn't even a trickle of blood that resulted from the cut. The eyes are not as delicate as I formerly thought.
An e-mail friend who has apparently had the surgery hoped for me that the VA allows the surgeon to use multifocal lenses. I've encountered the various types of lenses that can be used to replace the cataracts via the media, but I didn't have a keyword to do a web search in order to remove my ignorance.
Following his hint I Googled up "multifocal lenses" and that entire world was presented on the Results page with millions of hits. Cataracts are an age-old problem associated with the aging process in humans. Other animals too if they live long enough.
In a word, all the multifocal lenses have odd provisos attached to their insertion and use. My e-mail friend described one of them by writing that he will get a laser treatment they use to burn a hole in the translucent sac they replace the cataracts in. It doesn't seem to happen with the less expensive mono focal clear lenses very often, just the multifocal lenses.
The VA might be the same way about using multi focal lenses as the Medicaid policy cops to. They consider the clear mono lenses a medical necessity, but the multi focal lenses are thought of as a luxury item that are not necessary to good health, so if the surgeon puts in multi focal lenses, the patient has to pay the extra expense, and the cost puts most people off.
The temptation to spring for the multi focal lenses might be stronger if I were younger and was enticed with how not having to wear glasses might enhance my sexual appeal. Otherwise I might have a couple of choices about mono focal lenses.
The choice might be to have the mono lens in one eye set up for distance vision and the other eye have a mono lens set up for near vision. The articles I've read on the internet suggest this may be a good idea for people who have done this with contact lenses and find it easy to deal with. Some people do it with contact lens and it doesn't work well for them.
That can be a real problem to adopt this procedure and it turns out that doesn't work later on. Everything I'm reading strongly states that you don't wanna hafta do a replacement procedure unless its an emergency situation. In other words, the patient will have to live with what's done the first operation.
As far as I am is concerned, making up my mind about which procedure the surgeon uses before I even talk with him would be dumb and prohibitive toward getting the best service I can for me with this deal. In any case, I have to trust somebody to do this for me. I don't like having to trust people.
That's because my judgment is usually lousy because I get emotional, and I don't have deep enough pockets to pick and chose who I'll trust. So, I'll just have to wait until Thursday appointment, and see how it goes from there. It's a good omen, because I was born on a Thursday. Maybe I'll find a new life with my new bionic eyes.
❦
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
