Maybe you noticed it has been a couple weeks since I’ve written anything here. Readers are starting to wonder so I thought I’d post an update. It’s a funny thing about writing, that — for me at least — it really helps to be able to see and that’s something I’m not so good at lately. Over the last few months I’ve lost usable vision in one eye and the other is headed the same way.
It’s nothing serious. No glaucoma or macular degeneration, just cataracts — a result, I’m told, of my lifelong habit of not wearing sunglasses when I should have. I never liked carrying two pairs of glasses and now I am paying for that poor judgement.
Everything is fading to white. The solution is 10 minute-per-eye cataract surgery which will only happen when Dr. Belial, my ophthalmologist at America’s largest Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), feels I have suffered enough. This delay is senseless since my eyes, having spent 63 years getting this way, are not going to spontaneously improve. The only explanation that makes any sense to me is Belial will get a bonus and the HMO will score a financial win if I die before surgery. Maybe they know something I don’t?
It’s tough being a pawn in the medicine game.
But enough about me. Readers are wondering about… something. Actually they’re just wondering what happened, because most of the tech news happening just now is pretty mundane. There are plenty of subjects I’d like to know more about, of course. Who wouldn’t want to know the real story behind SamSung’s Galaxy Tab 7 nightmare? But in order to figure out things like that I first have to be a functional reader, which I frankly am not.
One reader was dismayed I hadn’t covered what he viewed as the very bad move of the U.S. giving up control of Internet names to international control. Frankly I’m not so bothered by it. Did the U.S. do an especially great job at that? Not that I ever noticed. And if this accelerates the inevitable move to IPV6, it won’t even be viewed by history as having been a big deal. Maybe it’s good to be giving-up something that’s not really very valuable at a time just before it becomes worthless, which is why I am also giving my kids less and less advice.
Nor do I presently have anything to say about Russian hacking or Trump tweeting other than that I am dismayed by both.
But I do have a couple of ideas for next week. And since my surgery STILL isn’t scheduled, I guess I’ll get to work on those, now that I’ve discovered the BIG PRINT control on my computer.
Get well soon!
We all want you to get that problem solved ASAP, because sometimes you have clever ideas, and most of us consider you as a friend -sort of.
Now, in the IT arena, all the time something IS going on… say that Ellison keep fighting to make the people remember there’s something like Java, or the Laravel guys try to operate on developers to get someone to pay attention to it, or Google improves Angular, or there’s something improved-changed-reinvented to write web stuff. IT has so many reinventions that seems -to me- it will only be stop by an asteroid crashing with Earth (we need to take off from Solar system before the Sun will run out of fuel, in about 5 billion years from now, we need NASA to hurry).
Best wishes, please get well.
I know the feeling – I’m now 65 but had my left eye cataract fixed a few months ago. Problem now is near sight left and long sight right, so I can’t use a single set of varifocals and need two sets of glasses.
A good tip is to get the affected lens from your existing glasses replaced with a plain lens after the operation – as it takes about 30 days for the “new” eye to settle down. As they will only usually fix one at a time.
My father had both eyes done and it eliminated his need for distance glasses.
He was amazed by how beautiful the countryside looked afterwards.
Cataracts (and a number of other eye diseases) are caused by high blood sugar. Even at what the so-called “healthcare” industry considers non-diabetic levels, e.g. under 127, your eyes will deteriorate. For optimal eye health, a level under 100 (24×7) is best.
I have cataracts, too. They are very slight, and the progression completely stopped when I went on a low-carb diet in 1999. I now keep my blood sugar between 85 and 95 (with rare spikes over 100 when I eat something with sugar or wheat in it).
Its heart warming to know that others have travelled the path you are labouring on and had success. You have been at it for a very long time (1999). I started a few years back, I hope not too late.
My conundrum is a bit different. A have a cataract in my right eye. Surgery waiting time is not a problem but my left eye is 80% blind. I am informed that the success rate is 95% but I obsess over that 5%.
Long-time reader here, from back when you were on newsprint. I had both eyes done last year. It pretty much ties up a whole quarter — pre-op exam in late June, final glasses prescription in early September. Couple of hints that might help:
Post-op, the instructions were to protect the eye with glasses or a flexible plastic guard. Since glasses are OK, my assumption is that they are more concerned with keeping out owls than germs (the antibiotic drops do that). They give you a soft plastic guard that I taped to my face the first night. Probably used too much tape, as it felt like I was pulling my eyeball when I took it off. Vision was blurry, but rapidly got better. They say no reading, because they don’t want your eye straining to focus. Watching TV is OK, because that’s no different than looking across the room.
Vision improved rapidly, and by the next day I was operating fine. They say that glasses are an acceptable substitute for the guard, but of course none of my glasses worked for that eye any longer. So I popped the lens out of my glasses and used cable ties to strap the guard to the empty lens.
For sleeping, after that first night, I went down to the hardware store and bought a pair of eye protection goggles. I tested several, and settled on a pair that was reasonably soft, wrap-around, and had a head-strap to hold it on. Only needed for the first few nights for each eye.
When you decide on the range to set your vision at, keep in mind that if you chose close vision, you _have_to_ have long range glasses, and if you chose long range vision, you _have_to_ have close range reading glasses. Doing one eye long and one eye close is an option (he set mine so that I could pass the DMV vision test without glasses — first time in half a century), but keep in mind that you see with your brain, and it might have problems sorting out which eye should dominate for which. It’s been over a year, and even now I sometimes have to pause while my brain sorts things out, and I _still_ had to get computer glasses. Your doctor can advise.
both Steves – is it possible (and sensible) to set the lens to monitor distance? This is about 2′ for me in front of 27″ monitor. I have two sets of varifocals, one “normal” and the other “computer”, so close range optimised for computer monitor 2′ or so.
TimH
Sorry about the delay. I only get by here when my RSS fires. I can’t make any recommendations, I can only help impact your options. My close eye works OK on the PC without glasses if I lean forward a little. My varifocal ‘computer’ glasses are what I wear for both PC work and reading.
When they do the operation, they pretty much tune your eyes however you like. Keep in mind that you are going from an infinite focusing bio-optical system to a fixed focus mechano-optical system, although in practice the range is fairly broad.
Personally I would stop dignifying the man by pre-pending the title Dr. to his name, say screw the HMO, find an actual ophthalmologist who isn’t an insurance whore and pay for the procedure yourself – it isn’t that expensive, not being able to see is.
I think you solved the mystery of why the HMO is making Bob wait so long.
I think I’d have to agree….whether it’s PPO, EPO or HMO, I do believe insurance (at least thru Covered Calif.) gives you the option to go to a second doctor for a second opinion, with the option to follow their advice and have it covered.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Cringely, but you made it sound like unless and until this ONE (and only this one) doctor says it’s time for surgery, you can’t have the surgery (at least while it’s still covered all or part by insurance)? That hasn’t been my experience, i.e. being shackled by ONE doctor’s decision with no other doctor options.
Perhaps a raft of comments here brought to the attention of the Board of Medical Examiners and the head of the HMO is in order here. My opthamalogist said “call when it becomes an issue, and we’ll schedule you.” Did. Got my good eye (ambylopis) a month later. Got the lazy eye a year later when everything was glare. And I actually get some quality use out of the lazy eye now. Raise hell and git ‘r’ DUN.
So, the usual leftoid cringelycuck droning after msm about muh trump and muh russians.
Good little slave to the end.
I hope you get the help you so desperately need.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03452
Got your number, teamist child.
I had both of my lens changed in my eyes a few years ago. Surgery was easy and recovery was almost nothing to it. Just lots of eye drops for 10 days. It is nice to be able to see clearly again.
Re: Nemo. I thought cataract surgery success would be much better than 95%, but for any medical procedure it’s a good idea to know what “success” and “not success” actually mean. I have had some disability since age 40 from ignoring the not-success side. (Not related to vision). Enough about me. Take charge of your health! Don’t just depend on the doctors! Be a curious patient! It is your health, and their job.
Had both eyes done last year at 78. Was astonished to discover that I had 20/20 vision in both, no longer needed glasses for normal distance vision. On the other hand, I now need two auxiliary pairs — one for reading and another, 1 diopter weaker, for seeing my Mac screen. Replacement lenses don’t focus, or at least, mine don’t. I have a friend who opted for reading with one eye and distance with the other and he likes it. Would have seemed strange to me.
I had both eyes done about six weeks apart two years ago. Not only do you see better but colors are much more vivid. Like other readers have commented it is an easy procedure with nothing more then eyedrops for couple of weeks. I enjoyed reading your columns since the newsprint days and look forward to future columns.
First, best wishes on the eye surgery. Almost everyone I know that had some sort of cataract procedure were pleased with he results. May yours go as smoothly.
However, now would be a good time to explore contingencies…namely aids for visual impairment.
I’ve known a number of “online” friends with varying degrees of visual disabilities, and some still rely on 20 year old software to read web pages, email, search…basically everything most of us take for granted about the internet and the web. Perhaps newer technologies will propel this field forward, such as Cortana, Siri and others, the one hurdle to date is the cost of screen reader software, which has been rather expensive.
Anyway, there are options…it just may take a little work and time to become accustomed to them so that you can continue your journalism. We, your readers, will have to adjust to perhaps a little more time between your articles!
Good luck, and keep us updated when possible!
Glenn
Get well soon! Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belial 🙂
I did the drill twice. Know the feeling well. Not a big deal. The image effects are amazing during the operation. LSD anyone? Get well soon. You write good stuff without question.
Best
Another Bob. 🙂
Cataract and Fuch’s corneal dystrophy are two easily corrected conditions. But there is no cure for retinal macular degeneration, particularly the wet AMD. You can test for both wet and dry AMD yourself by closing the other eye and blinking the eye you’re testing. If black areas show up right after the tested eye is opened you’re looking at macular degeneration. If in addition straight lines are showing up distorted, you’re looking at wet AMD.
Bob, ignore the comments about serious visual impairment, you are lightyears away from that. Any operating system these days can give you magnification and so can specific applications like browsers. Just please stop driving.
If you can fix it with a large font or an operation with a 95% success rate, you are fine. I am blind myself, I know what real visual impairment is like.
Keep up the great work!
This reminds me: Any of Bob’s readers want to help me make Spacemacs accessible to the blind via Emacspeak? Please drop me a line at Fernando@F123.org
Dr. Belial… cute, Bob (look it up folks, its a pseudonym).
I disagree on just about all of your “don’t matter” points, especially about ceding
control of the Internet. The reason no one noticed is exactly because the U.S. did
not (for the most part) abuse its discretion. I think it can get a lot worse now that it
is in “International waters”.
Get that vision back to normal, and get back to flying, and writing, soon. All the best!
So what do you think will happen first? Bob will get his cataracts fixed or the Mineservers will ship? My guess is that either way, it won’t be soon.
BTW, his wikipedia entry has been updated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely
Had surgery in both eyes a few years ago. Went from difficulty reading street markings until I got into the intersection to noticing the crack in the seam between trunk and fender of a car ahead nearly a half mile away. I’ve been twenty/twenty in both of them or twenty/twenty-five in one, now and no change in the other. Taking a brain supplement I amazed my optometrist recently because I am now able with concentration (no glasses) read the bottom line of the test image for the first time at 80.
I will be very interested in your experience, as I am facing the same operation after I heal from the operation for the detached retina.
We take our vision too much for granted, when it really is a miracle.
Best wishes.
I’ve had cataract surgery — it is easy and the effect is great — but there is a slim chance of it causing a detached retina. You said you wear glasses and the risk is greater if you are myopic.
One of my retinas detached. (I blogged about it at http://athleticsenior.blogspot.com/search/label/retina). It turned out OK , but it was no fun. I was told afterward that I should have had a retinal exam before the cataract surgery. You might want to do that to be safe.
A doctor that does not routinely do a retinal exam before eye operations is a sausage artist. Haven’t heard of one yet.
Unfortunately, I had one who was a sausage artist — at the highly rated Jules Stein eye clinic at UCLA.
Thanks for the update, was worried you were dead or something 🙂 Seriously though, hope you find a solution soon and get well!
It’s your eyes, pay the big bucks. Ming Wang. Went from 20-40 corrected (glasses my entire life) to 20-15 with no reading glasses. Worth every penny.
curious why my brilliant post this morning was deleted.
anyway others said it too, esp the set to monitor distance concept
and again; refer your “HMO” doc to the state board of ethics, and CERTAINLY don’t listen to such ignorance
Why not try an audio computer interface? I don’t know much about Dragon Naturally Speaking, but I’ve seen plenty of good reviews.
Glad to see you return, Bob.
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As for that worthless eye doctor, just dump him. Maybe you should petition to have his medical license pulled?
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My new internal lenses (from the cataract removal operations) corrected for most of my faulty vision. My new eyeglasses provided the remaining corrections. Distance vision is corrected by the upper part of the eyeglasses and near vision is corrected by the lower part of the eyeglasses. These glasses aren’t bifocals, the two corrections gradually merge in the middle.
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These same eyeglasses also darken when I go outdoors so I don’t need separate sunglasses.
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At first I had to use separate reading glasses for near vision. Then my brain gradually adjusted to my new eyeglasses and I didn’t need reading glasses any more.
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Good luck with your eye problem.
Re Bob’s return: Perhaps this comment you made on 10/10 did the trick: “The Dvorak home page did it.”
Yes, quite so.
You seem to have given up on technology very easily. Time to investigate how blind people function maybe, screen readers for output and voice to text for input.
I would like to wish you the best of luck with the operation, I’m not going to add either success or disaster stories – just remember that recovery does take time It’s always a “minor operation” before you go in and “major surgery” afterwards.
I have a good friend who’s a well regarded orthopedic surgeon who, when asked “Why did you become a doctor?” always replies … “When I enrolled at college, the carpentry course was full.”
Best wishes.
You should be entitled to a second opinion. That’s a second opinion by a different doctor with the correct specialty. When I asked for second opinion from Kaiser in Colorado, they sent me back to the same doc. I should have sued them, but I was in the process of moving and didn’t have the time.
My dad had this surgery a few months ago, and now he has great vision. He is quite happy with the result, as I’m sure you will be.
Small correction.
The Samsung product with the battery problem is the “Samsung Galaxy Note 7”
(rather than the “SamSung Galaxy Tab 7” as you have it)
This small error was present on the post as of October 16 2016, 17:15 eastern US time.
Had an eye scare myself this month, no fun. Get better soon!
What about the article that you wrote about the rigged electric voting machines back in the Bush era?
Bob, sorry to hear of your vision problems. I believe its a fairly routine operation, but it sucks that you’re having to wait. Did you consider flying to Thailand to have it done there? Or any of the other medical tourism centers for that matter. The quality is good, and you get to have a holiday by the pool while you recover.
Good luck and we are glad to hesr it is not macular degeneration. And good comment about the insurance “industry.” I work at a place that is required to take bids every five years for insurance providers, and we keep changing depending on the “deals” offered by the companies. It feels like patients are the commodities of the insurance business, bought and sold by insurance companies.
“Lanosterol eye drops, shown to reverse cataracts in a July paper in Nature”
https://www.google.com/search?q=lanosterol+on+cataracts&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=lanosterol+cataracts
Yes…YES…eye drops where all in the tech news a few months ago…
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https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uoc–edc110415.php
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/aaft-cp110215.php
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151105143817.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112132140.htm
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and of course google…
https://www.google.com/search?q=cataract+treatment+non+surgical&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
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I guess I am just a big wimp…when it comes to knives and needles anywhere (especially MY eyes).
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So, could somebody here please try some of these relatively inexpensive products and get back to us.
Already been tested: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4784074/
Results: Both lanosterol and control groups showed progression or no change in the lens opacity at the end of 6 days. Conclusion: Lanosterol 25 mM solution did not reverse opacification of human age-related cataractous nuclei.
So if pubmed is good, try NAC. Or read the amazon reviews. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12001824
NAC is a different chemical from Lanosterol. It may be an improvement, since they say “90% of NAC-treated eyes showed improvement in best corrected visual acuity (7 to 100%)” but that range of improvement is not of interest to me. I’d like to know what percentage of NAC-treated eyes show an improvement to 20-40 with glasses, or at lest how many can be said to have had a 90% to 100% improvement. At least we know the surgery works. What does a 7% improvement in visual acuity even mean?
In 2001, I was diagnosed with cataracts, which caused glare when driving at night. Insurance Co said they weren’t yet bad enough to fix. A year later they said, OK, left eye is now eligible to fix. My eye doc sent me to a specialist to remove my lens from its sac and insert a synthetic lens. Insurance would pay most of it. (Cost for 1 eye was $5,000 to 6,000.)
Options were to choose either a near vision or a far vision lens, or pay an extra $1200 for one that was focusable, which I chose. The results were amazing! I now had 20/20 to 20/25 vision in left eye from about 10 inches to infinity.
Less than 2 years later, the other eye’s cataract was severe enough for insurance to pay and I got my other eye done. For over 12 years now, my vision is still great. The only minor negative is a slight reduction in my night vision.
Can you say what make/model that focusable lens was?
At this point, I can’t recall what the brand was. it was a toric lens, though. Contact Denver Eye Surgeons in Lakewood (a suburb of Denver) to find out what they use now. My ophthalmologist was Dr. Jan Stahl.
I do find your articles extremely funny, astute, well written. Look forward to the BOLD PRINT Edition when your eyes have been operated and you can see better.
Well, when you become legally blind you can go down to the DOT and get a handicap placard for your wife’s car.
I know, it’s not very funny that HMO’s act like Donkeys and wait until you really can’t function.
What you are going through is what most Americans will go through with the Healthcare System in 20 years or so.
It will not be healthcare at that point, but actuary-care!
Well, you have always had 20-20 insight, now it’s time to get back your 20-20 vision.
You complain about HMO, but this is what ObamaCare will bring. Obama himself said that it is stupid to spend so much health spending on old people in the last months of life. It is called the IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, aka Death Panels.
When passing the bill, this one provision was treated with a special change of Senate rules that it can only be repealed within a particular time frame, and requires a supermajority to do so. That’s how unpopular they know this will be as it expands its cost cutting maneuvers.
I’m 76 years old. I would rather slip off into the great beyond a little sooner if it would help some youngsters survive.
Voluntarily choosing to avoid treatment is entirely different than having that decision forced on you by socialized medicine or something like a death panel.
The US does not have socialized medicine, that’s part of the problem, only the rich get treated or the ones that are rich enough to travel to a country with socialized medicine
I was considering Obamacare as a step toward socialized medicine, although it’s not there yet. As MikeN said: “Obama himself said that it is stupid to spend so much health spending on old people in the last months of life. It is called the IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, aka Death Panels.” Lowering the price of something by governmental edict, creates a shortage of that something. Affordable care, will cause the same types of problems as affordable housing or “affordable” anything: shortages and abuses of the system to get around the problems it creates.
Usually it is the rich people in countries with socialized medicine who travel to America for health care.
Though lately, they are choosing cheaper options like India.
When people travel 2 America 4 healthcare the government pays, no one in their right mind would go 2 India
Then you are not aware of the quality of medicine available there. Medical tourism to India happens plenty.
Re: India: “In major urban areas, the quality of medical care is close to and sometimes exceeds first-world standards. Indian healthcare professionals have the advantage of working in a very biologically active region exposing them to treatment regimens of various kinds of conditions. The quality and amount of experience is arguably unmatched in most other countries.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India The article also points out that India does not have socialized medicine.
I think in theory it has socialized medicine, but the government doesn’t have the money to fund it. So poor people are left with a Medicaid that is much worse than the one here.
Main way of keeping costs down is by having several tiers of doctors. More supply equals lower prices. Meanwhile in the US, the AMA restricts the number of doctors. Practicing doctors in Canada who wish to move here, have to do a residency all over again.
In my travels, I’ve talked to some Blind. I always ask them what do you miss about not seeing …. One of the top 3 answers … PORN … So get watching !!!!
When the tax dollars that should fund public health becomes foreign military aid that gets recycled as orders to the military industrial complex …
When public health gets funds, it becomes another industry.
Your Kickstarter-MineServer fans were wondering too. (ahem)
I’m in the same boat, at the same age. I hookup my laptop to my big screen TV.
I stare at my computer screen for 80 hours each week claiming I am programming.
Maybe it’s time I took things a little more serious.
Just curious, why are you giving less advice to the kids lately?