Finally got the frigging eye measurements done!
Julian and I left promptly at 10 am. Then I realized I didn’t have a mask on me, so we had to go back upstairs to the apartment to get one.
We then left promptly again, this time at 10:06 am.
The drive there was uneventful. We found the place at around 10:30 am. It’s one of many squat square office buildings nearish to VGH.
That’s “Vancouver General Hospital” for you non local types.
First problem : there’s some walking uphill and then walking up stairs involved in getting from the parking lot to the building.
The horizontal distance was trivial – a quarter of a block or so.
But I am quite feeble these days (should probably get that checked out again) and so for me it was brutally hard. There was a point when going up the stairs to the building where I thought my knees were going to buckle, but I managed to stay steady on my pegs and get in there.
Then a nice lady greeted us and asked us the usual COVID questions and gave us fresh masks. Up the elevator and down the hallway to Section L.
It was, of course, on the opposite end of the building from the elevator.
Into the office and on to the high precision eye measurement tests that were apparently so damned important that I had to haul my ass to Vancouver to get them done.
I was feeling pretty cranky by this point. Pain does that to me.
The first part was a lot like a more elaborate version of one of the tests I’ve done like three times for my local ophthalmologist, Doctor Faezi.
And I am thinking, did I really need to come here for this bullshit?
But the second part was…. very weird.
The technician put this plastic cup with your standard red laser inside over my eye and tells me to look into the red dot.
Slightly uncomfortable, but no problem.
Then he fills the fucking cup with water. Without even frigging warning me first. What the frick, man?
The water was cool and clean and didn’t hurt, but still, freaky deaky, dude.
Then he turns up the laser a little and the machine makes a series of cute beeping type noises as he looks for the spot it wants and then flash, done.
That was the right eye, which is only a little…. cataracted? Occluded? Distorted?
Fucked up, anyhow.
But now he had to do my left eye, which is extremely…. cataract-bearing, and I begin to appreciate why he didn’t warn me the first time because knowing it is coming made it way worse. Plus, it took him way longer for him to find the spot the laser wanted because, guess what, it’s hard to shine a light through an eyeball that is so cataractified that I might as well replace it with a clear marble.
So that sucked. This time it did start to hurt a little, mostly from the coldness of the water. He really should heat that shit up to body temp.
And then we were done. Back down the elevator and out to the parking lot. Got into the car while Julian went to get himself a veggie wrap at a nearby wrap joint.
And immediately realized I really needed to pee.
My bladder has been extra overactive today, so this was not a surprise. I was honestly surprised I lasted till then.
And this is when like a million panicked thoughts and emotions went through my head. There were no truly discreet locations nearby and yet peeing was rapidly becoming non-optional, so I had to get out of the car and pee up against the pillar of the parking structure and hope not to get arrested.
Mission accomplished. Relief on multiple levels. Julian came back and we came home.
More after the break.
My ups and downs
It occurred to me quite recently that there is a pair of questions that is rather key to my entire existence and yet I somehow have never even asked myself.
Namely : What makes my mood better? And what makes it worse?
I’ve been depressed for 25 years and somehow I am only asking this now. It’s like being on a desert island for 25 years before it occurs to you to wonder in which direction you might find land.
And how far away is it, anyhow?
I suppose it’s a consequence of the sort of death march mentality I have operated under for all these years. A mindset in which all that matters is surviving the day by putting one foot in front of the other unto infinity.
When you think like that, you don’t look around for ways to make things better and you don’t pay attention to what makes things worse.
You just keep going. Slowly, of course. Grindingly so.
But without ever actually stopping.
And really, why look around? Whatever is out there is outside your sad little race and belongs to an entirely different reality than your own.
Better to keep the blinders on and keep plodding along.
So what brings me up? Obviously I am hardly about to produce a definitive list in the space I have left, but I want to get things started.
Let’s see. Sunshine seems to perk me up. Sunny days are happier days for me, especially in the spring before it’s gotten really hot. My entire idea of “happy” is drenched in sunshine. So there’s that.
Getting money used to make me happy. But then I got my inheritance from my Dad and now I have $1200+ on my reloadable VISA and I don’t have that feeling of financial starvation any more.
Plus I have faced the reality of not being able to decide what to do with it.
Reading makes me happy, as does playing video games. In both cases, the quality of the product heavily influences the quality of the experience.
What else. I love high quality conversation with intelligent, curious people of lively mind and inquisitive soul. People who enjoy thinking about things and who are intellectually strong enough to entertain alternative perspectives.
Smart people, more or less.
I wonder where I could find more of that?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.