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I just got back, as I said in the last post, from Montreal. The primary reason I went there was to get Lasik (Canada has more advanced technology than the US, and even when the FDA approves certain equipment, such as the particular laser I was treated with, the earlier approval means that Canadian eye surgeons have more experience with the equipment than their American counterparts. Plus, it’s cheaper. And it’s Montreal). I was tired of being extremely nearsighted, and what with the onset of reading glasses* and all, it was looking like I’d be in very expensive and unworkable progressive lenses before too long. Why not get the nearsightedness fixed, and then worry about the aging-related reading glasses as a single prescription?
So I biffed off up North, where the many public wi-fi networks refused to speak to my netbook. And after a few days of sightseeing and wonderful meals and lovely chocolat chaud, I went to the clinic for my surgery. The pre-op and post-op is being done locally, but I went to Montreal for the actual surgery.
I knew there would be Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps. I probably should have guessed that, yes, everyone makes the same Clockwork Orange joke when the clamps are put in. I knew there would be some “pressure,” though I hadn’t really been clear on what it was for (apparently, to make you go temporarily blind so you don’t see the blade that’s cutting the flap in your cornea) or how much it would hurt when my orbital bone was pushed on.
I did not, however, know that there was going to be an odor — specifically, the odor of burning hair. It was apparently just the laser burning some carbon in the air, not my eyeball getting vaporized. But disconcerting, nonetheless.
It was over in minutes. The first half-hour afterwards was just fine, if things were blurry and I had the world’s goofiest-looking eye shields on my face. Then the anaesthetic wore off, and the burning and itching and feeling of sand-in-the-eyes started. That lasted four hours or so, during which time I was instructed to rest but not sleep — as if I could fall asleep with my eyes burning like that — and to blink at least every five minutes to keep things lubricated. I got very familiar with the limitations of my hotel room, which featured not a separate bathroom, but a sink, shower stall and toilet closet right in the room. As a concept, not terribly objectionable — until you realize that the legroom in the toilet nook leaves a little something to be desired, and it’s not possible to both take the wide stance necessary to position yourself correctly AND pull your pants down. Others before me had similar issues, or at least that’s how I interpret the fact that the seat was forever popping out of place.
After four hours or so, things started feeling much better, but I had to leave the shields on nonetheless until the following morning. Whereupon I removed them and went back to the clinic for my first-day checkup. My vision was 20/15, which is right about where it should be, since they overcorrect due to the fact that as the eyes heal, they naturally settle out a little, so I should end up with 20/20. I had a little inflammation in one eye, so they had me use the antibiotic drops more frequently for the first two days; I also have dryness, which is normal, so I have drops for that as well.
I’m quite pleased. Things are kind of foggy, I’ll need to use reading glasses for a few weeks until the overcorrection settles out, I have haloes at night, and my eyes are dry, but that’s all normal and should go away within a few days or weeks. But for the first time since fourth grade, I can fucking SEE without glasses or contacts. Yay!
____
* About those expensive progressive lenses that optometrist tried to push on me: turns out I NEVER ACTUALLY NEEDED THEM AT ALL. The doctor who did my pre-op for surgery figured that my contacts were overcorrecting my vision, which made reading a little difficult. So he put me into weaker contacts, and that solved the reading problem while still enabling me to see distances. Boy, am I glad I pushed back on those instead of spending almost $500 to solve a problem I didn’t even have.
I’m a gorgon, apparently.
I see there are a bunch of new people here. Welcome!
Just to let you know, all commenters have to be approved the first time, and I can’t do that from work. So your first comment might be stuck in the mod queue until tonight. Sorry about that, but once you’re approved, you should be able to post without a problem unless you trip the spam filter.
Threw this one together after a trip to the farmer’s market Saturday. Too early for field tomatoes (they only had hothouse), but not too late for wild asparagus, some of which looked more like chives than asparagus. I made this up as a pasta sauce, but it would have really worked well as a stew. But I’m the kind of person who eats bowls of pasta sauce.
- Olive oil (I probably used about 1/4 cup)
- Garlic, several cloves, diced finely or smashed
- Harissa, several squirts (just, um, don’t do what I did and squirt it all over your pants)
- Juice of one lemon
- [Some white wine or broth would be nice, but I didn’t have any]
- Fresh tomatoes, chopped (I used four because that’s what I had)
- A can or two of chickpeas, drained
- Bunch asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
- Fresh black pepper
- Salt, to taste
Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed large saucepan. Throw in the garlic and sauté for a couple of minutes, being careful not to burn it. Add the harissa and cook, stirring constantly. Add the lemon juice and broth/white wine, if using. Add the fresh tomatoes, chickpeas and asparagus. Simmer until the tomatoes break down and the asparagus is tender, about five minutes depending on how thick the asparagus is. Serve either as a stew or as a pasta sauce.
Just watched the Kentucky Derby.
Big Brown won, with great life story of the trainer (whose girlfriend was murdered in the next room from their daughter, who was with him at the Derby) and the jockey (seems he’s got a hearing-impaired son).
Really a great pull-away win.
But.
Eight Belles, the first filly in the race in 9 years, who took second place by more than the same margin that Big Brown beat her, broke down after the race and was euthanized because she broke both front ankles.
I was at Belmont Park for the Belmont Stakes in 1999, when Charismatic was supposed to take the Triple Crown, but he broke down at the end. It was a gorgeous fucking day in Queens, perfect temperature, no discernable humidity. My friends Rosalyn and Kevin were in town from Chicago; Roz was on business and Kevin was along for the ride (though he was from Kearney, where the pork store on The Sopranos is (sometime, remind me to tell you about my (very) peripheral involvement in the North Jersey and Connecticut mobs) and had moved to Chicago to get away from the mob thing).
Kevin lent me $50 to bet, because I had been misled by the Visa Triple Crown ads that they’d accept my debit card there. I bet on Charismatic and a couple of other horses; Kevin wound up betting on the eventual winner, Lemon Drop Kid, because of a throwaway comment I made about him while I was looking at the race guide, that he was out of Seattle Slew.
In the end, Lemon Drop Kid won, Charismatic broke down at the finish, and Kevin won about $4000 on his bet based on my throwaway comment about Lemon Drop Kid’s parentage. He also sprung for dinner that night.
The creepiest bit is that I’m fairly certain that the breeders will work hard to extract usable eggs from the corpse of Eight Belles.
I’m really beginning to hate the liberal blogosphere.
When I got home tonight, there were several news trucks parked outside one of the neighboring buildings. It’s cold, so I didn’t go and ask what was going on and instead figured I’d watch it on the news.
Well, I just saw the news. And this is what’s happened.
This is just horrifying.
I’ve seen this dog around, and I can’t say that I know anything about the dog’s temperament, because I’m not permitted by my own dog to get anywhere near other dogs. But I had to put my last dog down because she bit me badly, in the face, when I discovered in quite the wrong way that she was an object guarder.
A lot of people were very angry with me for putting her down, including the dogwalker I used at the time, who called me up and screamed at me for being so irresponsible, said she’d have taken the dog, she couldn’t believe I would kill my own dog, etc., etc.
Mind you, this was a woman who was so stoned half the time that she couldn’t close the baby gate I used to keep the dog in the kitchen. You know, the kind where you just raise and lower the bar to get it to open and close.
But one thing I knew: I was not going to pass along a serious aggression problem to anyone else, particularly when it came in the package of a cute, friendly and seemingly happy-go-lucky dog. And I also knew this woman was not equipped to handle this dog’s issues (not that it turned out that I was, either, but she didn’t live with the problems and the constant challenges for domination).
And one of the scenarios I feared was that the dog would go to a family with children because she seemed playful and cute, and that the kids would get hurt when they tried to take something from the dog. Or even got too close when she had something — which is where I ran afoul of her. I’d never noticed this behavior because I’d never tried to take anything from her; everything was an exchange. But the dog trainer I consulted after I was bitten asked me a few questions that threw everything into sharp relief: Had I noticed the dog freezing when I passed by while she was chewing something or eating? Did she ever growl at me? Was the skin broken? On one side of the bite, or both? (Yes, yes, yes, and both). Answer: she was an object guarder, the signs were there all along but I didn’t see them, and the severity of the bite meant that she meant to hurt me.
I’ve got no idea what happened with this dog, but the grandmother, who was babysitting, likely didn’t see the signs because while this was a trusted family pet, she probably wasn’t that familiar with it. Could be the parents didn’t see them, either, if they weren’t looking. But now they’ll probably have someone ask them a few questions, like the dog trainer did me, and all those little things that seemed a little odd at the time but were dismissed will start to fall into place, and they’ll wonder how they could ever have missed it. And they’ll tear themselves up about it, with grief and guilt.
One of the people interviewed on the news tonight was my former dogwalker, who lives in that building. I couldn’t hear what she was saying because my cable signal is breaking up pretty badly, but it opened a few old wounds to see her talking about something like this. I suppose it’s too much to hope that maybe now she realizes that this is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to avoid by having my dog put down after remedial training failed to address her aggression.
May it be a better year than 2007.
You’ve finally given me something interesting to read while I clear out the spam trap. Trackback spam with quotes! A sampling:
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and no-one dares criticize it — Pierre Gallois
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it — Woody Allen
Man has no right to kill his brother It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder — Percy Bysshe Shelley
And, finally, this one from “beef-witted setting”:
I must confess, I was born at a very early age — Groucho Marx
Good try, and I thank you for providing me better reading material than the folks who want to sell me porn and diet drugs, but I’m still not approving your trackbacks.
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