Unnecessary Eye Surgery Works for Irish Octogenarian

No, you've not missed anything. I hadn't posted anything here about Oogesti's eye surgery. (Oogesti, sometimes also known as Dusty's Human, is a Cat Sanctuary colleague in his late eighties.) Oogesti broke his "good" glasses in June, and although he was walking around and even driving more comfortably without glasses than with his second-best or third-best pair, the doctor balked at prescribing a new pair of glasses until Oogesti had cataracts removed.

I said, "Whaaat?" I said, "That doctor doesn't care whether people need an operation or not; he's just determined to collect the fee for doing one before Oogesti gets any older." I said, "Isn't that the same doctor who was supposed to have removed a cataract from my father's right eye, twenty years ago, only he gave Dad a kind of eye drops that tend not to work for a lot of people of Irish descent, and Dad's reaction consisted of sudden painful permanent glaucoma, and although he had cataracts that was the real reason why, for the last ten years of his life, Dad was blind."

I thought of a lot of things to say about this plan, but as long as there was hope that the operation might work I didn't think it would be edifying to publish these thoughts. Oogesti is some sort of distant relative on Dad's mother's side; blue eyes and cataracts run in that family. I was very concerned about his operation.

However Oogesti liked the idea of being able to get the "needs glasses" thing taken off his driver's license, so yesterday he had a cataract removed from one eye. And today, as I walked out to the computer center, I thought "Is it too soon to check on him yet," started to take out my cell phone, looked up, and saw Oogesti sitting on a stone by the side of the road. He wanted everyone to know that the surgery went well.

He still has to wear a protective eye patch at night and big black wrap-around sunglasses in the daytime, but he expects to be able to read again, and is planning to have the cataract removed from the other eye in a few weeks.

It's refreshing to know that a doctor who wasn't sued for malpractice has learned from his mistakes. It's refreshing to know that there are cataract treatments that work for people of Irish descent. And it's refreshing to know that I won't have to make room for Oogesti's animal friends just yet...and yes, I'm sure that, annoying though he can be, all of the people he's been annoying all these years are glad that Oogesti is still walking around.