Release date (Hardcover)

I am heartily getting sick of all the reports I hear about people who bought something (whatever it might be), who didn’t research their decision, who didn’t have to buy whatever it is they bought, and are now blaming someone else for their current problems.  Let’s look at LASIK eye surgery.

First of all, in the vast majority of cases, this is elective surgery.  You don’t need it to survive.  THESE ARE YOUR EYES, PEOPLE!!!  You only have one set - that’s it!!  It’s not like an appendectomy, which is the removal of an infected organ that we don’t need anyway.

You may want it to enhance the convenience of your life.  My husband had it, and he loves it.  It didn’t, however, stop the presbyopia - the physiological changes that happen to your eyes as you age that results in the need for reading glasses - from happening a few years later.  But for 90% of the time - he’s fine.  And he knew this going in.  He also had me - the roving librarian - to get him any and all information on the procedure, and to know which questions to ask.  He was nearly the ideal candidate: he was male (women have certain risk factors, which I’ll get to), in reasonably good health, with a minor correction and little astigmatism. 

One risk factor that contributes to adverse effects you can have is your pupil size.  Your pupil is what lets in light and allows light to reach the optic nerve.  (Yes, just like a camera.)  The size of the flap the surgeon has to make must be at least as large as your pupil, or you can get the haloes/sunbursts effect.  And as I understand it, there’s only so large the surgeon can make the flap.  So if your pupils dilate too much under low-light conditions (like driving at night), you’re not a good candidate. 

Another risk factor is that of dry-eye.  Your eye has nerve endings that sense when your eye is dry and passes along the signal to your eyes to secrete tears, thereby lubricating the eye.  (It’s like your very own eye sensor!)  When the surgeon cuts away the flap, he’s severing a bunch of these nerve endings.  They won’t grow back.  Once they’re gone, that’s it.  If you have plenty of other nerve endings, no problem.  If you don’t, then there’s a problem. 

A third risk factor is your prescription itself:  the stronger the prescription, the more material needs to be ablated from the cornea to get the right correction.  It also increases the chances of a second operation, called an “enhancement.”

Then there’s me.  I did tons of research to see if I could have the surgery.  This was back in 2001-2 that I researched my options, and the thing that hasn’t changed is my eyesight.  First of all, I understood exactly how the operation works.  In case you don’t know, the surgeons cut away a portion of the cornea that covers the eye and reshapes the remainder underneath (the cornea is the external lens of your eye).  Now is when you need to understand the science of optics, nearsightedness and farsightedness.  If you’re nearsighted, the reshaping of the cornea is easy - you’re taking off material to reshape it to mimic a lens you might have if you wore glasses.  That’s called a convex lens, like a gentle “C” shape if you were to see if from the side.  With the lens, you’re changing where the focal point converges - ideally, on the optic nerve at the back of your eye, instead of in front of it.  Studies estimate that about 90% of the population, if they need vision correction, are nearsighted.

Farsighted people (like yours truly) are fewer and far between.  We need a convex lens to correct for our vision, to bring the focal point of light from behind the eye back into the eye.  Even my eyeballs are short!  The laser surgery required is of a completely different nature.  Add to that my other risk factors:  my prescription is rather strong, and while the cylinder (astigmatism) isn’t bad, the axis on which it happens is way out there.  (Explanation of those terms here.)  I’m also a female, which puts me at higher risk for dry eye; the medications I take also don’t help (decongestant for allergies - decongestants dry mucous tissues).  After tons of research, I had an evaluation done in Rochester, by a doctor who helped develop the only machine (at the time) which was qualified to operate on my type of prescription.

Getting back … the doctor’s staff ran me through all the tests - twice.  At the end, we called in Paul (my friend Les was there as we had all just gone to the Darien Lake show of the 2002 Vapor Trails tour) to discuss the results.  The first words out of the doctor’s mouth were, “I’ve worked on worse eyes than yours.”  Not what I wanted to hear but I was pleased with his honesty.  All the risk factors he tested me for: dry-eye, pupil size:  no problem.  The problem was with the physics of the eyes themselves, not their components.  To sum up:  one of my eyes will never correct (even with glasses) to 20/20.  There would be a 75% chance I would need “enhancements”.  Hmm. 

I have worn glasses since I’ve been six years old.  I’ve tried contacts and they never work for me (pain, discomfort, etc).  I would so love to be rid of my glasses.  But nature has decreed that in one eye I’ll never see 20/20 (20/25 is still pretty good), and laser eye surgery science has yet to catch up to a degree with which I am comfortable.  I chose not to do the surgery. 

So what if you don’t have an information-seeking, uber-geek wife on your staff to help you get and digest this information?  Go to a doctor who’s willing to discuss all this information with you.  Your doctor should be able to take the technical stuff and explain it to you in a way you understand.  You only have one pair of eyes!  If the first one brushes you off or doesn’t make time, go to another.  If you’re not completely comfortable with how you feel - don’t have the surgery!  You can always go back and get it done, but once it’s done - that’s it!  You don’t need to do this surgery.  The risks are real, and they’re not always something the doctor can do anything about.  He can’t fix your enlarged pupil, sorry.  But you can choose to not have the surgery done.  Get dry-eye a lot?  Laser surgery will make it worse.

I still wish I could have it done; many of my friends have had it done and just love it.  But I know I’m not doing it for the right reasons.  We live in an information age: there is absolutely no reason anyone who can afford the LASIK surgery shouldn’t be able to get the information s/he needs.  There is information on laser eye surgery out there, on many reputable internet sites.  If you don’t trust the information you find on the internet, find a doctor you trust and who will answer your questions honestly and truthfully. 

It’s your choice.  To steal a line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, spoken by the last Knight Templar to Indy:  “Choose wisely.”

Oh joy!  The Gemini, New Zealand & April in Paris roses all came in today.  Right now their roots have been trimmed to expose new pith and they’re soaking overnight in Vitamin B-complex enriched water.  The exposed pith of the roots will take up the water and rehydrate the rose plants.  However, you can’t soak them for more than 24 hours - too much of a good thing.  I know there have been no tests to explicitly prove the Vitamin B in the water makes a difference but for $5 what the heck?  They should be fine, even though the temps are supposed to be below 32F.  The water should stay above that, as it’s been in a dark container all day. 

I just started Cosmos and Alyssum seeds downstairs.  The moon entered Pisces (water sign) this morning, so I’ve got until Friday morning to do all my planting until … Sunday.  That will work out well.  I’ve got cleanup around the garden - prep work for the planting on Sunday - and I’m also hoping to have some fun and see a movie this weekend.

Happy Beltaine / May Day / whatever tonight.  To quote two of the most profound philosophers of my generation, “Party on, dudes!” 

I am so beat.  I’ve been out all day trying to get the newest part of the garden in before 5:30pm today.  Why that time?  According to the astrological gardening calendar, the moon passes out of a semi-fertile sign into a barren sign (Capricorn/earth into Aquarius/air).  Yeah - Aquarius the “water bearer” is an air sign.  Plus, it was a good time to stop! 

Now the other parts of the rose garden look deserted as I’ve been digging them up and moving some into the newest part of the garden.  More room for - you guessed it - more roses!! 

Why didn’t I work yesterday?  A little hooky is always nice.  I went visiting out Syracuse way and had a very pleasant time.

Egads! I always thought myself more akin to the Greens, maybe the Grays - but according to this quiz, I’m too darn close to the Reds, but another quiz showed I’m closer to the Yellows. Ah well, I would be the first Brown to have multiple Warders … or I’d head to the Greens.

Heh heh - Mike you are the brave one!  I don’t know if I could post that much of my old stuff… actually, I know I couldn’t.  You’ll see the “to a legend” poems up here soon enough, now.  I was going to ask you about putting up “Green Eyes of a Pond” but I put the link to that page in my “Authors” blogroll.   L8r!

In my current job, I was left with “database” constructs written in Microsoft Access 2000.  Erp.  I have decided to start porting them over to PHP/MySQL.  Now, I’m a fairly good high-level programmer - I understand the logic and looping structures well - but the devil is in the details, which is where the real fun for me begins.

So the last two days I’ve been beating my head against the wall programming in Access VBA when I know I could do it better and faster in PHP.  There are certain reasons why I have to do it in Access - reasons I don’t like but have to deal with.

The roses are almost all here; what I’m waiting for now is the Mills Magic Rose Mix to arrive from Tennessee.  Jeff from Beaty said my shipment was in Buffalo this morning, so with luck I’ll have it tomorrow night or Saturday.  Did I mention that shipment was 2 40lb buckets?  I do have 50+ shrubs now, with the almost 2 dozen I got this year.  We were starting to uncover the roses last weekend and found unexpected tenants in the Patriot Garden - really large field mice.  We’re talking huge.  I’m trying to get my mom’s beagle over here to get ‘em out of there.  One of the Veterans Honor shrubs broke away as we were cleaning it off.  The wood looked pretty good (all things considering) and I didn’t see any evidence of other disease (and I’ve seen far too much crown gall to not know what it looks like, thank you), so our tentative guess is that, since it was very near to where the mice were nesting (we found at least two sites), they may have used that as their favorite snack stop.

My two “bibles” for rose care and planting are All About Roses (Ortho) and Growing Roses in Cold Climates by Jerry Olson and John Whitman.  Like I mentioned in a previous post, I use organic/natural fertilizers and growth stimulators:

• Mills Magic Rose Mix *
• Mills EasyFeed Liquid Concentrate
• Mycorrhizae *
• Messenger (Eden BioScience)
• Liquid Karma
• Response

 *Used at planting time

Along with the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener Program, I’ll be entering the American Rose Society’s Consulting Rosarian program at the end of June.  I thought life would be a little calmer once curling got done …

If I had to catch a cold, I guess now is better than during curling season.  (Oops - did that too.)  Zicam and I have forged the holy alliance against the heretical germs that are invading.  The germs gained some ground yesterday but today the alliance has not only held the lines, but recaptured ground that was lost yesterday.  (Can you tell I’ve been reading far too much Philippa Gregory?)

The major drawback to the zinc stuff is the havoc it causes with your senses of taste and smell.  If I don’t wait as long as I can after having a lozenge (3 hours) to eat, the food tastes off if not just plain wrong.  Plus, I’ve noticed scents/odors/smells in the air that I know weren’t there before.  It’s like I’ve got a new olfactory spectrum.  Really!  Part of me wishes I didn’t have to smell it but the alternative is a stuffed nose which is uncomfortable at best and doesn’t help me breathe at worst.  So - I suck it up and deal.

If my health doesn’t degrade any, the former “rose boat” now “cloverleaf” garden in the back will be moving much closer to completion this weekend.  We’ve got roses heeled in (buried under moist soil) in the veggie garden, with about a dozen more on order.  Interestingly enough, the weather should hold throughout the weekend - let’s see if my lungs do.

The PHP/MySQL coding goes as well as can be expected.  I’m actually making some good progress on the first “functionality” of it - selecting users from a source group and adding selected ones to another table.  While it sounds very basic, as I got one piece into place, the nuances of what I was trying to accomplish gradually revealed themselves… such as, once you select a person, that person shouldn’t appear in the original list (so you can’t select him again); how to move the data around (arrays vs. tables - tables won); making sure the $_POST array and all cache is cleared, etc.

Oh!  And I need to take photos of the greenhouse in the basement.  Most everything is coming along as planned, except for the Cosmos and Peppers.  I’d like to see some life from the larkspur and am impatiently waiting on the impatiens.

I swear, I’m going to be dreaming in ER (entity-relationship) modeling diagrams.  I have a membership on Safari (http://safari.oreilly.com) with the smallest bookshelf you can get (10 slots) and the book Learning MySQL by Seyed M.M. “Saied” Tahaghoghi & Hugh E. Williams is helping me out tremendously.  I’ve had it with the databases (done in Access) we have in-house - it is far past time to recreate them with MySQL and PHP.

With all this exceedingly grindingly fine work, I now know why Jolt cola was invented.  I used to live on the stuff during my undergraduate career.  Since the makers of Jolt were (and still are) based in Western NY, I could get Jolt at school but not home.

We’re about to see how well I translate ER diagrams into table definitions and how well MySQL Workbench, er, works?  I don’t drive myself working thru lunch anymore - that’s my “brain break” and it really does work!  I divert my mind into some pleasure reading (right now it’s a re-read of Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest, Ysabel, with Kate Mosse’s Sepulchre on desk), along with a turkey sub from Subway, and when I return - I’m overflowing with great database-y ideas.  Or maybe I’m just an afternoon person.