Attribution: BruceBlaus, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes along the keeper’s observation that a day that starts with an early morning needle poked into an eye is likely to improve as the hours go by.
The eye treatment procedure for macular degeneration is one that many people endure and is considered successful in preserving eyesight that would otherwise be impaired by excess blood collected on the retina.
As is the case with many others, the keeper’s eye issues have a genetic component: his mother was almost totally blind when she died in her 90s.
The keeper’s eye treatment is administered by the VA and each needle session is conducted by a young UW eye doc in training under a senior VA pro’s supervision. This translates to a young trainee practicing at poking a needle in your eye, which could be off-putting except that the keeper doesn’t think about it that way and instead marvels at those brave patients who first allowed it during the early research days. Mom would have been one of them had it been offered in her time.
And while he solicits sympathy from Phyllis, the keeper’s eye treatment procedure is only a very quick moderate stab of pain followed by a few hours of eye irritation.
And then he is good to go, and to SEE as he joins his late Mom’s age group.
Photo by Bill Stokes