My eye doctor is trying to confuse me.\u00a0 He recently looked into my dilated eyes and told his assistant, cataracts,<\/i> which, based on the clicking of her computer keys, she promptly noted.<\/p>\n
“I’m too young for that,” I said.<\/p>\n
“No, not really,” he wisely informed me.<\/p>\n
“Tell me what a cataract is,” I said.<\/p>\n
He launched into the explanation that cataract<\/i> is actually the Latin term for lens<\/i> and that we all have them.\u00a0 I.e., we all have lenses in our eyes.<\/p>\n
Well, duh\u2026.<\/p>\n
But I don’t think that’s what he was communicating to his assistant when she noted the word in my file.<\/p>\n
“So\u2026tell me what is wrong with my cataracts, then,”\u00a0 I said.<\/p>\n
“As we age\u2026”\u00a0 He would<\/i> have to preface his comments that way.<\/p>\n
“As we age, our lenses\u2014our cataracts\u2014begin to get cloudy, making it difficult to see.\u00a0 It’s especially difficult to see at night because of glare.\u00a0 With cataract surgery, we remove the lens and replace it with an artificial one.”<\/p>\n
“And to remove my lenses, you would have to cut<\/i> my eye open?”<\/p>\n
He nodded, again, very wisely. \u00a0“If you’re satisfied with not driving at night, you should be okay.\u00a0 But if you really need to be on the road after dark, you might consider surgery.\u00a0 It’s up to you to decide when.”<\/p>\n
Lovely.<\/p>\n
I Googled cataracts<\/i> on the internet and this is what I learned from the National Institutes of Health:\u00a0 A cataract is a clouding of the lens in the eye that affects vision.<\/i><\/p>\n
That definition doesn’t quite match what my doctor said.<\/p>\n
Hence, my confusion.<\/p>\n
And, of course, no mention was made of natural supplements that are capable of dissolving cataracts. \u00a0I had to learn that on my own.<\/p>\n
I am an intelligent woman, you see.<\/p>\n
Yes, my memory is slipping a bit, but that doesn’t make me stupid.\u00a0 I can recognize when a doctor thinks the exhibition of his intellectual prowess is more important than a patient’s understanding of a health issue.<\/p>\n
No wonder I have very little faith in doctors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My eye doctor is trying to confuse me.\u00a0 He recently looked into my dilated eyes and told his assistant, cataracts, which, based on the clicking of her computer keys, she promptly noted. “I’m too young for that,” I said. “No, not really,” he wisely informed me. “Tell me what a cataract is,” I said. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}