Oh my eyes!

So I've noticed, since I began needing reading glasses, oh, about three minutes after turning 40, that my eyes have been getting progressively worse. This is really depressing. Especially since my grandmother, who is 96, has only just STARTED needing glasses to read. What's up with that?? I comfort myself by attributing my own diminishing eyesight to all those years spent reading in dim light -- while hearing my mother admonish me that doing so would "ruin your eyesight." Guess she was right on that one.

It wasn't so bad at first: I bought a pair of inexpensive readers at the local dollar store, and pulled them out whenever I needed to read the small print on the medicine bottle. The part that tells you the dosage. That progressed to needing them to read the newspaper, then the computer screen, till really they pretty much spend the whole day sitting on top of my head, waiting for me to need to read ANYTHING.

The dilemma, of course, is that I don't need them for anything BUT reading. Which makes following printed directions while driving especially challenging. I put them on to glance at the directions, whip them off to peer through the windshield, back on to check the directions -- well, you get the picture. And even worse is the tiny screen on my cell phone: I flip it open, click to the contact list, then squint and try to make out the names. Scrolling through the list, I think I can just see the letters enough to identify the name, choose the number, and press "send", praying that I'm calling the actual person I need to talk to. It's like phone roulette. Seriously, it's hard to look cool using your cell phone if you first need to root around in your handbag for the reading glasses that have migrated to the bottom. It's hard to look cool any time you have to perch glasses on the end of your nose and peer through to read the screen that your teenage daughter can see in dim light.

Of course, it's even less cool to ask said daughter to read the screen FOR you. I guess it may finally be time to get those bifocals...sigh.

Our Amazing Healthcare System

My dear, dear friend Michele recently had a hysterectomy. While I have never had this procedure myself, my understanding is that it involves removing an organ from your abdominal cavity. They can do this nowadays through your belly button, though how they get the uterus out through that teeny, tiny thing is beyond me. But then, I don’t have a medical degree.

The procedure (or “surgery”) is done on an outpatient basis, meaning she went in in the morning and was home in time for dinner. This might seem a bit extreme, given that she was, after all, having an organ removed. Call me crazy, but that seems to call for just a little more time hanging with medical professionals.

They told her to come in at 6 am for her 7 am surgery, that she’d be in recovery by 9:15, and that once she was able to pee on her own, she’d be good to go. So to speak. So she got there, they put her under, and sure enough, when they woke her, she looked at the clock in recovery, and it said 9:15. This is pretty impressive, given that most doctors can’t accurately predict how long you’ll be in their waiting rooms. Once she’d spent the requisite (read: short) amount of time in the first recovery room, they took her to the second recovery area, where her husband would be able to come in and visit her, and put her in a hospital bed. The kind on wheels.

Well, she lay there, recovering as it were, for awhile, just trying not to feel woozy and nauseous. She’d never actually had surgery before, and the anesthesia was making her throw up. But at some point, between puking and the pain, she realized she really had to pee. She got a nurse, who, in an empathetic nurse way, helped her up out of the bed, stagger to the john, and get her situated on the toilet so she could do her business. The nurse then left. Michele peed, finished up, and got up to go back to bed, at which time she realized, they really meant it literally when they said she’d be good to go once she peed: the bed had been removed from the room, and in its place was a chair. One of those uncomfortable recliner-looking chairs the hospital provides when they don’t want people getting too comfortable and staying too long. Which meant, it was time for her to leave. Good thing she only had ONE organ removed.

Mammograms

I just had my annual mammogram -- like a good girl, I have one every year -- and honestly, this one was the most uncomfortable one ever. And by uncomfortable I mean painful. I can't believe no one has come up with a better way to look inside our breasts. It just makes no sense to take what is essentially a round object and to literally work to LIFT IT off your chest, yank it sideways, and then squash it flat. It brought me to tears.

The technician worked me like clay, as if she thought there were no muscles or tissue, never mind nerve endings, in any part of my body. I get that this is a job to her, but honestly, I was standing right there, a fully realized human being. I couldn't even get her to crack a grin, but once she started manhandling -- I mean, manipulating -- my breasts, it was clear she was all business. I stopped trying to talk, gritted my teeth, and just tried to make it go as quickly as possible.

And seriously, I don't understand why she doesn't just have me take that silly top off as soon as I walk in. Instead, we both pretend she isn't going to not only see but touch both of my breasts by the end of my time there. It makes no sense.

This is the 21st century; I challenge someone out there to come up with a kindler, gentler way to do this whole sordid procedure.