Modern Vespa

Uh... Do you still have your tonsils?

HA! No, they got it right after all but I was sweating it out going in wondering if they'd remove the right stuff and leave everything else that I wanted to keep ownership of.

"I'm really sorry. I honestly thought you said 'orchidectomy'."

No nurse, I said "Slip off his spectacles"!!!

Last time I was in the doc came over and said "love got some good news and some bad news"
Bad news is we've amputated the wrong leg

Good news is the other one's getting better

I love orchids.
But they are really hard to grow.
They require a lot of moisture.

Many years ago I was aboard the USNS Eltanin doing oceanographic research in the Antarctic. At about 64 degrees South a cook came down with appendicitis . We happened to have both a physician assigned to the ship and a marine bottom photographer who taught pathology at Dartmouth Med School. I was in the little operating room where the two docs were debating whether it was really appendicitis or something else, and whether they should perform dangerous but potentially life saving surgery aboard the ship. They were pretty heated and the pathologist finally said ,"Well, we can't really say until the autopsy."

To which the patient said, "Oh, help me Jesus!"

We turned around and steamed six days to Hobart, Tasmania, traded cooks, and steamed six more days back south to resume work.

The cook was told that if he had died there would have been good news and bad news. The good was that we would have had 12 more days of research time, the bad was that we would have had to ditch the ice cream to store his body in the freezer.

In the days when you had to count backward from 100 for the slow acting anesthetic to take effect, the anesthesiologist who knew me by sight joked " So you're here for the kidney transplant, right?" just as I was passing out and couldn't answer. Perhaps he liked the panicked look on my face during the operation.

Cheers,
Bob

Me too. My wife had one done and says she sees better than she has since age 12. The procedure I'm having done uses a laser and lasts all of 15 minutes.

My grandmother had the same surgery in 1966 and it was done in-patient under general anesthesia. She was hospitalized for two days with her head held immobile with sand bags on either side, and she was catheterized and instructed not to move at all. In those days, they didn't replace the lense, just removed it. She wore these strange coke bottle glasses after that.

I'm curious to see the difference it makes.

For the first 40+ years I felt I had pretty good vision, wore glasses since I was I believe a preteen, could read names and numbers in phone-book, remember those?, without my glasses. Now even with the bifocals I have to work a little to be sure I have the numbers right!

I will still need reading glasses after the procedure but not for distance. There were some options offered but I chose that version. Need to wear glasses for "safety" when doing much of my hobby stuff s might as well go that route.

Not sure if the choice of the time for the first eye was a good one, one day before my 50th high school class reunion! I hear some of those kids got a bit older in the last 50 years, unlike myself!

Supposedly the laser makes the incision and destruction of your "old" lense more precise. One plus of the laser operation is that it can eliminate the astigmatism of I have in both eyes as well. I am opting for the single vision lens which means I will still need reading glasses. Doc actually advised againt getting the "bifocal" implants.

In Le Wife's case, her surgeon (who'd already replaced her shoulder, both hips and one knee at this point...it's quite literally a long story) took a felt marker himself and drew YES and NO on the relevant bits shortly after admission for work on her other shoulder. He's also one of the best at NYU Langone, which is a good thing, since she's getting her other knee done in November...which I think gives her full Bionic status. (Let's just say our last few trips through various international airports have been...interesting.)

As far as surgical one-liners go, my two faves are:

"By the way...what's your life insurance payout again?"

And:

"Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to." - (Buckaroo Banzai)

I've heard two good one-liners by my doctors.

Once, while all prepped and waiting for the anesthesiologist to enter the room, in he comes, he's Asian and holding a brown paper bag and he exclaims: "OK, who ordered the Chinese food?"

Another time, while I was in the doctor's office, ahem, bending over for an exam, as the doc put a rubber glove on, the office Muzak suddenly came on. I thought I was smart by commenting: "Geez, I hope Johnny Mathis isn't going to start playing" to which the doc didn't miss a beat and replied: "No, I charge $35 extra for that, and your HMO won't cover it."

My musician friend noted how we old folk sooner or later turn the conversation to our state of health.

He calls it "the organ recital".


Get well soon, y'all!


(Hey, they say that laughter is the best medicine).

"No nurse, I said to prick his boil!"

Not a good time to find out your nurse has dyslexia!