I had forgotten to put my follow-up eye appointment on the calendar and was totally involved in all the ceremonials and talking heads about signing the health care bill. While listening to Chris Matthews talking to somebody or other, I was also reading somebody's meme on line and one of the questions was "Have you ever had a headache so bad it affected your vision?"
Vision!
Eyes! Brain clicks on.
Clock! 10 a.m. and my appointment is at 10:30!
Office is in Sacramento!
Yikes!!!
I grabbed my purse, yelled at Walt to give a treat to the dogs and got into the car. I thought I'd left my cell phone behind, but didn't have time to go back for it. I raced (yes raced) down the driveway and headed to the freeway. (Later I realized that I did have my cell phone after all.)
I didn't speed, but did go the speed limit and, miraculously got to Kaiser only 7 minutes late. I thought. After they had checked me in (thank you, God!) I looked at the receipt and found out that my appointment was actually 10:50 so I was actually early.
I had forgotten to bring my iTouch, so had nothing to read, but I did have earphones with me, and I could continue listening to the book I was listaning to on my iPod in the car (James Patterson's "Alex Cross's Trial"--a very good book)
Dr. Lieu is a good optometrist. Much more thorough than the guy I've been seeing for about 20 years, the one who mis-diagnosed my cataracts a year ago and sent me into panic for about a month. I'm usually the silent patient who sits there and does what I'm told to do, but I was still emotional from watching Obama sign the Health Care bill, so I asked him what he thought of it.
He was very cautious but we discussed several points and I think we ended up with his admitting to being cautiously pessimistic and me admitting to being cautiously optimistic. When he told me to come back in a year, we decided that we'd see then what had happened in the intervening year with the Health Care bill.
As for my eyes, everything is looking good. The surgery seems to have been a success, the remaining cataract not as bad as I thought. It was a very positive appointment. Doctors' appointments should always be so positive!
He dilated my pupils and my pupils never fully dilate, so I am not really incapacitated, but things WERE very bright outside. I decided to use that as an excuse to stay in Sacramento and treat myself to lunch.
Near the medical office is a Mongolian Barbeque where we eat often, but I realized that near that place was a Red Lobster. I'm not a lobster fan, but I knew that they had...what else?...crab, of course, so I decided to treat myself to some steamed King Crab legs and they were wonderful. I like the flavor of Dungeness crab better, but King Crab has the advantage of giving you a huge bite of crab when you crack a leg...you get more without having to work as hard.
My eyes undiluted and my belly full of crab once again, I headed home, continuing to listen to the James Patterson book. It's a gripping tale about lynchings in the deep south at the turn of the century.
It was so gripping, that I came in and sat down to listen to the last 45 minutes of the book before doing anything else.
It's an interesting book about hatred to read during a time when there is such an outcry about the Health Care bill -- five bricks tossed through the windows of Democratic representatives, name calling of the representatives, that lovely "you're a baby killer!" comment yelled, ironically, at Bart Stupak. I ended the day deciding that we have not progressed very far in this advanced country of ours...and finding that very depressing.
(Does the it occur to anybody the irony of all this violence erupting over the health care bill because it is too much government interference in our lives...but nobody thinks twice about the government deciding who can get married and who can't? Government interference in the most intimate area of our lives is OK...but don't you dare try to change my health care? Or is that expecting logic from irrational human beings?)
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