The ophthalmologist has of late been recommending that many (most?) of his, ahem, more mature patients embark on a regimen of eye vitamins--omega, fish oil----for their eye health, and specifically to prevent or ease the symptoms of macular degeneration. That condition occurs in a whole lot of older adults, and if you don't have it, you well may get it, if you just live long enough. But Dr. S. doesn't want his patients taking drugstore vitamins; his office will take your information and a drug company in Pennsylvania will set you up with a monthly subscription, at about $35-$50 a month, depending on your condition. The doctor says that company's vitamins are purer than those in your neighborhood drugstore. The office even provides a goody bag with information about the company and free samples of the vitamins, just to get you started. Then the company rep will telephone you and set you up with your monthly supply.
I don't like to cause waves, so of course I accepted the information and samples. However, something besides the fish oil smelled fishy to me, so when the rep called me a week or so after my appointment, I politely demurred, saying I would call her back when I was finished with my medical treatments, which were real---and included a kidney stone retrieval and a couple of lithotripsies plus the TKR. I put the subject out of my mind; I don't like fish very much.
Three months ago, when I returned to the omega-doctor for my follow-up appointment, he asked if I took vitamins. Without thinking, I said no. He then went into a brooding mode, saying they might be of benefit and he wasn't pushing them, just suggesting. Only then did I make the connection as to what he was talking about.
Today I visited Dr. S. again. He asked if I were taking a daily vitamin, and I said yes. He said, "They're good for you." We all seemed much happier.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
What's Up, Docs?
I've been a patient at my current ophthalmologists' office for a long time. The practice has grown, and moved, operating at several locations now, and so has added new doctors as well as other medical professionals. But something seems to be in the works, as sensed by my investigative gene. A month or so ago, one of the senior doctors ran a newspaper ad for several weeks, with his picture and in his name only, though he's usually fully booked for his specialty and surgical appointments. Today, on the checkout counter, was a stack of full-page flyers with the picture and vitae of one of the other esteemed senior doctors. Perhaps they're having an identity crisis, with all those other big fish in the pond.
Takeaway
There's no explanation for it, but whenever I have an appointment with my retinal specialist, I have the thought that his shoes are the type that Rahm Emanuel would wear, and I have absolutely no idea what kind of shoe Mr. Emanuel wears.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Home : Alone
I don't remember the second day or the legions of days after that, but I have a vivid picture of the first day. My father drove the car into the middle of the back yard, whatever driveway that had been there long since unused and gone back to nature. When my sister and I opened the doors to get out of the car, we were up to our shoulders in grass, or hay, as it were. My brother, a few years older and quite a bit taller, was probably not so overwhelmed. Since I was not quite six years old and my sister only four, the overgrowth may not have been as wild and exciting as we perceived, but to us it seemed like the wild west. And there was the house, empty of life, waiting for us. It was pale yellow with the more prominent side boards and finishings painted a darker tone of peach.
We were too young to understand what home ownership must have meant to our parents, but now I realize it must have been a monumental triumph. Both my mother and father had come from homes where a parent had died, and following the throes of the Great Depression, money was hard to come by. When my parents first married, they lived in an apartment building which used to stand by the entrance to the Valley Falls Mill. Later they moved to a tenant house on the Bates farm in Melrose, from there to a house on what is now Brundige Road, after that to a farmhouse near the Reservoir, and the last rental on the curve outside the village, owned by a woman named Schmidt.
Back in the day, when people were to leave their homes for one reason or another, it was customary to let family and relatives know in case they had any interest in acquiring the property. I understand this is still an expected tradition, especially when it comes to farmland. So when my mother heard that the Barrett home was going to be put up for sale, she went to work to try to get it. How she even heard is a mystery; we lived in the boondocks, with no telephone, and the only transportation was my father's car, which he mostly drove only to work, where he was gone all day. So it must have all been done through the mail. After she learned the price from my father's sister Kate and her husband, who had decided to live separately, Ma set out trying to make the sale happen. We could get a mortgage, since my father always worked, but we needed a down payment. Again, a flurry of letter-writing: she asked her brother Matt to lend the money for a down payment, probably around $200 since the price of the house was about $1200, a considerable amount of money at the time, at least in our circle. I can still see the calendar on the kitchen wall marked with the scheduled repayments of the loan to Uncle Matt. My father would have been equally gratified to have become a homeowner, after all those rentals, but he was not as optimistic about the possibility, and may have been too proud to ask a relative for a loan.
The history of the house is a little blurred now. When we moved in, there was a very tall pine tree in the right side of the front yard. My father recalled that when his sister Lizzie was a little girl, his father cut a branch off that tree to make a Christmas tree for her. And once, only once, I heard my father say that his own father died in what we called the Middle Room. I never asked for any more information because kids then didn't ask questions, at least not us kids. But my grandfather had been dead for years before my parents married, so family had to have owned the house since some time in the 1800's. When we moved in, there was a long porch across the front of the house which extended to what used to be a barroom, but by then an empty shell. That space would later be renovated and leased to Jack's Confectionery Store, a business forced out of its previous location, which was to be Kerr's Variety Store, I think.
The front porch was the center of childhood life, especially in the summer. The porch pillars were fitted with thick substantial molding a few feet above floor level. When we were little, standing on those wooden wedges gave us a perfect view of the train tracks, a treat since we weren't allowed to cross the road. And even more intriguing, the last post at the far end of the porch had gnawed areas where people going into the bar would have hitched their horses. Those bite scars gave a lot of credence to what was then a favorite pastime of playing Cowboys and Indians. Yippee!
We were too young to understand what home ownership must have meant to our parents, but now I realize it must have been a monumental triumph. Both my mother and father had come from homes where a parent had died, and following the throes of the Great Depression, money was hard to come by. When my parents first married, they lived in an apartment building which used to stand by the entrance to the Valley Falls Mill. Later they moved to a tenant house on the Bates farm in Melrose, from there to a house on what is now Brundige Road, after that to a farmhouse near the Reservoir, and the last rental on the curve outside the village, owned by a woman named Schmidt.
Back in the day, when people were to leave their homes for one reason or another, it was customary to let family and relatives know in case they had any interest in acquiring the property. I understand this is still an expected tradition, especially when it comes to farmland. So when my mother heard that the Barrett home was going to be put up for sale, she went to work to try to get it. How she even heard is a mystery; we lived in the boondocks, with no telephone, and the only transportation was my father's car, which he mostly drove only to work, where he was gone all day. So it must have all been done through the mail. After she learned the price from my father's sister Kate and her husband, who had decided to live separately, Ma set out trying to make the sale happen. We could get a mortgage, since my father always worked, but we needed a down payment. Again, a flurry of letter-writing: she asked her brother Matt to lend the money for a down payment, probably around $200 since the price of the house was about $1200, a considerable amount of money at the time, at least in our circle. I can still see the calendar on the kitchen wall marked with the scheduled repayments of the loan to Uncle Matt. My father would have been equally gratified to have become a homeowner, after all those rentals, but he was not as optimistic about the possibility, and may have been too proud to ask a relative for a loan.
The history of the house is a little blurred now. When we moved in, there was a very tall pine tree in the right side of the front yard. My father recalled that when his sister Lizzie was a little girl, his father cut a branch off that tree to make a Christmas tree for her. And once, only once, I heard my father say that his own father died in what we called the Middle Room. I never asked for any more information because kids then didn't ask questions, at least not us kids. But my grandfather had been dead for years before my parents married, so family had to have owned the house since some time in the 1800's. When we moved in, there was a long porch across the front of the house which extended to what used to be a barroom, but by then an empty shell. That space would later be renovated and leased to Jack's Confectionery Store, a business forced out of its previous location, which was to be Kerr's Variety Store, I think.
The front porch was the center of childhood life, especially in the summer. The porch pillars were fitted with thick substantial molding a few feet above floor level. When we were little, standing on those wooden wedges gave us a perfect view of the train tracks, a treat since we weren't allowed to cross the road. And even more intriguing, the last post at the far end of the porch had gnawed areas where people going into the bar would have hitched their horses. Those bite scars gave a lot of credence to what was then a favorite pastime of playing Cowboys and Indians. Yippee!
Friday, July 26, 2013
FB Mystery
I like people and the idea of having friends, but how to explain the surprise acquisition of friends on Facebook is beyond me. In the last few weeks, I have 2 new "friends" who I didn't request. I don't understand how it happened, but I hate to seem like a stalker......
Thursday, July 25, 2013
An Onion in Holliston
My parents, in their earlier, more communicative days, had an ongoing argument about knives, and how sharp they should be. My mother was fearful of sharp knives, and would have preferred they not be honed to a razor edge. My father, on the other hand, maintained that sharp knives were actually safer because dull knives were more likely to slip, and therefore cut the hand that wielded it. As a child, I had no opinion (as expected of children in those days), and I hadn't thought about the subject until the other day.
I was cutting an onion with a super-sharp knife when it slipped just slightly, but not before it sliced into my left index finger and the fingernail of the adjacent middle finger. Just a small cut, though quite a lot of blood to the cut finger, but no problem after a few days. The ongoing issue is with the vertical cut to the nail of the middle finger. It wouldn't seem that a split nail on the middle finger of the left hand would interfere with daily life, but, annoyingly, it does. From everything from washing my hair to opening the newspaper, the nail throbs, sensitive to anything that involves the slightest pressure. Where horizontal splits or bend-backs of the nails usually resolve in a few days, a vertical slit in the nail is going to require a longer time period, yet to be determined. Meanwhile, I'd started out protecting it with a Band-Aid, but after going through a whole box, replacing one every time I get my hands wet or use lotion, I've switched to just using Scotch tape.
Ma, I think you were correct about those dang sharp knives. And, Daddy, I remember those stories you used to tell about Nazi World War 11 torture methods involving the pulling out of fingernails. I feel sorry for those poor war victims.
I was cutting an onion with a super-sharp knife when it slipped just slightly, but not before it sliced into my left index finger and the fingernail of the adjacent middle finger. Just a small cut, though quite a lot of blood to the cut finger, but no problem after a few days. The ongoing issue is with the vertical cut to the nail of the middle finger. It wouldn't seem that a split nail on the middle finger of the left hand would interfere with daily life, but, annoyingly, it does. From everything from washing my hair to opening the newspaper, the nail throbs, sensitive to anything that involves the slightest pressure. Where horizontal splits or bend-backs of the nails usually resolve in a few days, a vertical slit in the nail is going to require a longer time period, yet to be determined. Meanwhile, I'd started out protecting it with a Band-Aid, but after going through a whole box, replacing one every time I get my hands wet or use lotion, I've switched to just using Scotch tape.
Ma, I think you were correct about those dang sharp knives. And, Daddy, I remember those stories you used to tell about Nazi World War 11 torture methods involving the pulling out of fingernails. I feel sorry for those poor war victims.
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