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The night before last I just lay in bed and never really fell asleep, and I didn't find many naps during the long day yesterday. I don't know exactly when I went to sleep in the late afternoon, but I woke up with the eleven o'clock news blaring away on the TV I had left on, and my bladder screaming for relief. After I finished my toilette and moved around a little bit, I realized I needed to set my new alarm clock to make sure I got up in time to keep an appointment at the VA Hospital for a post-op appointment for the surgery on my left eye.
Maybe that's when I made up my mind to keep the new alarm clock instead of taking it back for a refund. I don't need an alarm clock very often, but when I do I want to be able to rely on it. Even though the clock loses a couple of minutes a day it does set off the alarm when it's set for, and if it's a couple of minutes late it's not a threat to our peaceful co-existence.
Today is the day when the three digit heat is supposed to go away for at least a week. It's cloudy this morning and that is holding the humidity in place although the high pressure system has definitely moved into place. Instead of a brilliant sunrise followed by rising temperatures, there is a lovely pink glow to the clouds to take it's place. It's actually pink for me in both eyes now. I don't know how long it's been since I have experienced such a lovely pastel sight.
My left eye is still not perfectly clear. It has seemed to get a little better each day, but not so much improvement the last couple of mornings. I'm not wearing eyeglasses to write this entry, so I can't be too unhappy with the overall results.
My suspicion is that there is not too much improvement to be gained from here forward, but since my vision is so much clearer with the new plastic lenses and I can see color so much better it might be ridiculous to complain too much to the surgeon during my appointment at 10:00 a.m.. I have a final post-op appointment early next month.
Soon, this decade-long foray to get the cataracts in my eyes replaced will be over. If you've read any of my blogs for long you know of my trials and tribulations. I don't know that it's any more satisfying to get things like this done from the stance of being dirt poor than simply paying the medico's asking price with hard-earned cash. Such does give a sense of accomplishment.
At least I haven't come out of my efforts blinded by total incompetence. The Veteran's Department of the government uses M.D.'s on fellowship to do this kind of work. The surgeons who performed the procedure on my cataracts are medical students working on getting certified in a specialty like opthalmology at the University of North Carolina up at Chapel Hill, and the M.D.s from Duke University who intend to specialize in rheumatoid arthritis handle my RA.
The only experience they have or actually need to become specialists in some medical field happens this way. I don't know or care what sort of financial arrangements happen, but it's probably the only way poor doctors can get to have specialties and get outta having to deal with the great unwashed. It takes four years of what amounts to a high-class apprenticeship after they become licensed MDs.
Most of them haven't become cynical yet, and some of them still display vestiges of ideals and compassion. That won't last long. Probably because they're expected to be more humane than mere humans. No blame. They asked for it during their youth. If they had waited until they understood the nature of human beings a little better they might not do it.
My need to dip into my scant savings account to pay my property taxes disgruntled me earlier this week. In the past I've been able to do without and save enough money from my Social Security checks to pay the government to leave me to my own devices. I've been getting a check from the agricultural department because the government forced the tobacco growers to sell their allotments back to the government.
This happened due to my small inheritance. If that hasn't already run out I probably won't get much more. A year's worth at most. Considering the nature of annual inflation rates and the fact that Social Security recipients has been denied cost-of-living raises for the last two years I will inevitably die in some institutional poor house.
With the way things are falling apart I probably won't even be aware that I'm senile and abused by Nurse Wretched. If I won't be conscious of it then, why worry about it now?
The weather has changed since I've been sitting here typing. The clouds are gone or at least going. The high pressure system looks like it's taken over and it feels less humid. That's the only comfort promised with this system taking over for a week or so. The temperatures will still be fairly high, but the humidity is supposed to drop considerably. It's about time.
With the clouds pretty much gone and the air much drier, the sun is now shining brilliantly through the open eastern doorway on the second floor of my house. Soon, I'll get up and take a shower for the sake of the medical staff at the hospital. I haven't had one since I did it for the same reason a week ago. Thats how it goes with old people. They're not sexually desirable anymore, so why waste the water? '-)
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