The "eyes" have it!

My wife and I have reached the age where much of our casual conversations with friends concerns the latest procedure or surgery we've been through! "Did they put you to sleep?", "Did it leave a scar?", "When are you getting the other one done?", or " Is it hurting you?" are some of the conversation starters for us these days.

Our latest adventure was cataract surgery. My sweet wife (bless her heart) had been told she had cataracts a couple years ago. At that time the optometrist assured her that they were small and need not be addressed. On her last visit, he said "Gracious! Those things have really grown! You'll need to have them seen about!". With her vision seeming fairly normal to her, and knowing that Medicare will cover cataract surgery, she asked if she could wait until she reached Medicare age. He told her "Sure...you can wait, but you're already illegal to drive in one eye, the other is not far behind and they're only gonna get worse!" This convinced her, so, here we go...he set her up to see a specialist in cataract removal surgery.

The first visit to Dr. M's office involved meeting and greeting and a quick "see for my self" type eye exam. He said "Yep! You have some fine cataracts there!", then he moves over to his computer. My wife has a gift. She can talk to people and make them think that they are the best thing since sliced bread! She noticed how fast Dr. M was typing and, being a former business teacher, she said "My! You are fast! We need to give you a timed writing!" He grinned and said "My parents made me take typing in high school...hated it then, but now, I'm glad they did!".  Well, this opened the door to a variety of conversation topics and I guarantee that by the end of the visit, she had him feeling really good about himself!

The next visit was scheduled about a week later. We arrived at his office and the waiting room was packed. Worried that we might be in for a long wait, my wife asked the receptionist "What's going on today?...almost standing room only!" We were told that a V.A. doc visited Dr. M's clinic once a month and this was the day. Relieved that most of the people there were to see him, not Dr. M, we sat down and waited. This time it was a quick "Hello, how ye doin?" from the doc, then a technician took her and measured the lens in each eye. Not too many years back, the only option was to remove the cataracts restoring the vision a person had before. Now they remove both cataracts and natural lenses and insert an artificial lens. This amazing technology not only eliminates the cataracts, it also improves vision to the point that glasses are no longer needed except maybe to read. With measurements complete, we were given a surgery date a couple of weeks later and then instructed to go and register at the surgery center used by Dr. M. With all this done, it was time to go home and wait.

Waiting on a surgery date is certainly more stressful than waiting on a vacation. You think a vacation date will never get here, but, a surgery date gets here much quicker than you want. Anxiety nags at you more and more each day even though you know 99% of people have no problems with cataract surgery. So it was with my wife. Bravely, she got into the car on the morning of the surgery and we set out for the surgery center. She was scheduled for 10AM, but when 11 rolled by, we were both about ready to say "Forget it!". Finally about 11:15 they called her back. I'm thinking about an hour and then we'll be on our way...not the case of course! Three hours slowly drag by and I have just about sat a hole in my chair. I am now a little worried that something is wrong, but, I've heard nothing and I reason that they would tell me if something was up! I sat there nearly another hour and finally a nurse sticks her head out calling for my wife's family. I gather up her purse (which I had been complimented on several times during the waiting period by total strangers) and followed the nurse to the back. There she was sitting up in a recliner, still groggy from anesthesia, and still hooked up to monitors of all sorts. I greeted her awake and rubbed her back and shoulders a little, then asked to see her eye. She opened it. I could not tell that anything had been done to it. She told me that her eye did not hurt and that she could see very well. About 5 minutes later I am told to go get the car and bring it to the patient departure area to pick her up. I'm out and back quickly and we're on our way home.

The next day we head back to Dr. M's office for a follow up examination. Her eye now has 20-20 vision! Again she thanks and praises the doc on his amazing skill.  He told her that he had done over 40,000 cataract surgeries.  Her first eye is now fixed and healing nicely. Now for the second eye.

Having watched the actual surgery on her first eye from a video provided by Dr. M, my wife prepared herself for the second eye. Even though she knew what to expect, it still weighed on her mind that someone was going to poke around in her eye again! The anesthesia had made her sick at her stomach the first time, so, IV Zofran  was administered during the second surgery to alleviate the sick stomach. It did its job well. The second eye took about the same time as the first. The cataract on the second eye was much more involved and thicker than on the first. After watching the video this time, we both wondered how she could have seen at all from that eye! It's amazing how much different it is to her now.

The follow up on the next day verified what we had expected...she is now 20-20 in both eyes! Praise the Lord my wife can see clearly again! Now and for the next couple of weeks we are to administer drops in her eyes to make sure they heal properly and have no infection.  Hopefully we are done with "procedures" for a while, but, for now, she has another great conversation experience that she can share with all her buddies. I guarantee she will!

Teach Your Children

My wife and I have been watching the TV series Once Upon a Time by Netflix DVD rental. I really like watching TV this way as there are no commercials. I'm spoiled. The show is full of fairy tale characters and it is interesting how the writers have intertwined the characters of the different fairy tales to make a progressing story line on the series.

So far, we've seen Snow White, Prince Charming, the dwarfs, and the evil Queen, Jiminy Cricket,  Pinochio, Rumplestiltskin, Captain Hook, Peter Pan, Belle, Frankenstein, Ariel, Mr. Shmee, Robin Hood, Tinkerbell, and now the Wicked Witch and flying monkeys from Oz.

We are now at the point where we try to guess who the next character introduced into the show will be.  In the current season, the Wicked Witch is the meanie. My wife keeps asking, "Why don't they just throw some water on her and melt her?".  I say, " Maybe they want to bring Dorothy in to do it.". Sure enough, Dorothy shows up, dashes water on the Wicked Witch and melts her down! (Doesn't put an end to her though, guess she plays the evil too good).

I don't think today's kids know nursery rhymes and fairy tales very well. Whatever they do know comes from an iPad or computer and that's sad to me.  They have heard of some of the characters, but, they don't know the stories very well, so, I'm afraid that eventually, this method of parent to children interaction will be lost, along with part of the way parents communicate to their children that they want them to grow up to be "good" rather than "evil".  The TV programs and computer games that they watch and play make the difference between good and evil a bit of a gray area. I mean, from what I've seen, the hero/ heroine contributes about as much to the violence and mayhem as the villain!

I realize that the world changes with every generation,  but, that change is controlled to a great extent by the people living in that time, and if the difference between good and evil is a gray area, what will life be like?  Teach your kids the difference! Take them to church, talk to them, let them know you want them to be good people, tell them fairy tales and nursery rhymes...be a parent!  They will love it and you will too!

"Smart" Cars and DTV

Last February, we bought a 2013 Ford Taurus and we really like it. The car is a six cylinder with power everything and it provides us with a quiet, comfortable ride. From the outside, the car is easy on the eye, but appears as normal as any other machine of its type. That's where the normality ends. The car has no ignition switch or key! It's a "smart" car. It comes with a keyless remote that allows you to unlock and open the doors simply by walking up and pulling the door handle. You don't have to ever take the remote out of your pocket or purse...I like that. Once you enter the car, the steering wheel telescopes out and the seat adjusts to where it was the last time you rode...when you turn the engine off, the steering wheel telescopes down and the seat moves all the way back..that's good...makes it easy for us old codgers to get in and out. To crank the engine you mash the brake pedal and press a button...the thing fires right up. It has bluetooth technology, dual zone heating and cooling, GPS, radio and CD player, and many other buttons and whistles that I have yet to discover. Everything is accessible through a touch screen or buttons on the steering wheel. It's an amazing machine! Wait..it is a machine isn't it? One day shortly after we got it my wife got out of the car and left her remote on the seat. The car immediately started blasting the anti-theft horn...how did it know to do that? Does it have a mind of its own? Twice now I have found the car sitting in my garage with both front windows down and the doors unlocked...I don't like that! We always lock the car at night, so I know neither of us just forgot and left it that way. What's going on with this thing? Imagine taking a trip somewhere and leaving the car in a busy parking lot, locked when you left it, but wide open when you got back! Shortly after it happened the first time, I asked the manager of the service department at the local dealership if he knew why this might happen. He had no clue about it...said he'd never heard about it before. I just shrugged it off as a freak occurrence that would probably never happen again, but then, it did! Now I'm really scratching my head, so, when all else fails, read the instructions! I pull out the manual (about 3 inches thick) and start searching for the reason that my car would do this. No luck there, so, I do the modern day thing....Google! It turns out that my car along with many other late models from all companies have a feature on the remote that not even the salesmen nor the mechanics know about. If you press and hold the unlock button on  the remote for about 5 seconds, the doors will unlock and both front windows will come down! I carry my remote in my pocket all the time and apparently the button was being pressed by some other item in my pocket long enough for this to happen. Mystery solved...maybe...or is this "smart" car just trying to aggravate me? Hmmm! I know it couldn't happen, but what if that thing decided one day to crank itself up and drive off somewhere? Sure hope it tells me where it's going before it leaves! Naaa...it couldn't do that...could it?

We now watch digital TV via microwave technology. This is supposed to be quite an improvement over the old analog TV which received the radio waves. I really can't tell any difference between digital and non-digital broadcasts, they look the same to these old eyes. I agree that the picture is sharper and clearer, but I'm not convinced that it is because of the microwave signal..might be that TV sets are just made a lot better. *shrug* What I don't like about it is that if the wind blows just right or there's a cloud in the sky, you have no picture or sound at all! With the old system, there would be a picture, maybe fuzzy but watchable, and sound, either the actual program or frying. At least you knew the set was working properly. Now you get a silent dark screen with a message "No signal or weak signal" and that's it!, or the screen freezes right in the middle of what you are trying to watch. It drives a person nuts!

Technology challenged? As fast as new things come out, who's not at least a little bit challenged? We try to keep up, but, change is a slow process for us. My kids tell us all the time that we need new and updated stuff. Why? Our old stuff still works..I don't have to watch movies on my phone! I still use the old fashioned dial a number and talk to someone approach. I don't need a text plan....shoot...I don't text much! Facetime is great, I can see my grandkids regularly, but, I lived 55 or so years without it and made it all right. It's a wonderful, fascinating techno world that we live in, but hey, I know how to live without it and still be happy.

If you see a car moving down the road with no one driving it, it'll probably be mine taking a trip without me! If you do, just don't try to out"smart" it!

God bless us all!