Not blind

 

Monday, June 29, 2009

 

Okay, so I’m not blind after all.

I had my fears over the last few weeks as the floaters increased in my eyes – or seemed to.

Last fall, I noticed them during a photo shoot – things popping up in the view finder that did not appear when I snapped the shot. My vision seemed blurry, too. And after a while, I started seeing flashes in the corners of my eyes. I thought it was a result of my wearing dirty glasses – that was until I saw worm-like shapes scooting across the vision of one eye and knew it was really streams of blood.

After two sessions of intense laser blasts, the doctor pronounced the horseshoe-shaped tear in the retina sealed.

He had worried that the retina would become detached. So between sessions, I laid down in a dark room and waited for the eye to heal.

Of course, I would not be all right again since this was part of a degenerative disease of the retina, and I could expect it to happen again, and most likely the other eye.

In January, I got another scare when similar floaters appeared in my other eye.

The doctor checked and told me he could find no leak.

But I didn’t really believe him.

Sunlight makes the condition worse for several reasons. It does additional damage to the retina, and also makes the floaters most obvious.

So I feel like a vampire when I avoid bright days.

Recently, the floaters bothered me more than usual. Each eye had a different pattern. So that when I have both eyes open it is hard to tell which floater belongs to which eye and whether or not I have new floaters to worry about.

Since I hadn’t been back to the doctor since January, I started to worry.

Thursday, I got to a new doctor, who tested me for everything, and took a deep look into my dilated eyes.

Everything is fine. Just a few floaters. I don’t have to get checked again for a year, although he did say that my eye glass prescription had changed since I got new glasses last fall, something I should expect.

And, of yes, I forgot, I can also expect to get cataracts.

                                                                                

***********

 

Madoff is getting sentenced today.

This seems ironic to me. With all of the credit card companies, banks, and other investors who bilked the world out of jobs and mortgages, only one man is going to jail for being an honest crook.

He admits he’s a thief, while all the corporate presidents who got fat on other people’s hard work, sit back and enjoy their ill-gotten gains.

What is wrong with this world that we create symbolic villains, who we make an example of, while we allow other criminals to escape justice?

I guess nobody really wants to look too closely at the nature of capitalism because it would reveal how thin the layer is between honest and dishonest, and how most business delves into the dishonest area most of the time.

This is the real legacy of President Ronald Reagan and the collection of people who changed the whole concept of work in America, turning us all into clerks.

 

**********

 

A new book and film seem to paint a poor picture of the abuses that took place in Iraq just after America invaded.

While the author tries to paint a sympathetic picture of the woman sergeant caught in a photo with a dog collar around the neck of an Iraqi prisoner, the attempt only makes me realize how much like Nazi Germany we have become – where our guys and gals were only following orders.

President George W. Bush didn’t invent torture, but he – like Adolph Hitler – lived by the theory that powerful people were above the laws and moral rules ordinary people had to follow. Therefore it was okay to torture and humiliate prisoners, kidnap people, hold them in secret prisons, grant them no rights.

While the author showed us how troubled the woman sergeant was since she became the poster child for the new era of torture, we do not get the full picture.

Other reporters claim ordinary soldiers threatened their lives when they sought to uncover wrongdoing in the military.

I agree we should support our troops in times of trouble. But they should be held accountable when they break moral rules of civilized behavior – especially the high ranking officers who turn a blind eye to such activities.

While the sergeant said she was blinded by love and encouraged by her superiors to do what she did, as a moral person she should have known it was wrong – just as ordinary German soldiers should have when Nazis ordered similar behavior.