Dale Was a Pirate!

It's been awhile since I posted anything, so, I had a hard time choosing what to blog about. I thought you might be interested to see Dale with his Pirate patch. His little granddaughter, Ellen, is sitting on his lap. Last month he went to Dallas to get his cataract removed from his eye at the VA hospital. Long story as to why he went there instead of doing it here in Utah.

Before he went in for the surgery, the doctor that examined him told him he is always in on the surgery but there is usually another doctor there also. The part he didn't tell him is that the other "doctor" is a fifteen year old who doesn't know what he's doing.

The surgery is only supposed to take an hour, but that's if a grown-up does it. If a kid does it, it takes twice as long. They laid him on the table and told him to hold his head really still. "Don't sneeze or move at all. Don't talk, because when you talk, you can't help it, your face moves. If you move your face, well, we could really mess up." Now, I know what you're thinking . . . same as I was thinking. . . Don't they have a way of holding your head still so that you don't move? So, the surgery starts and part of the way into it, Dale realizes it's the kid that's doing the surgery, and so keeps hearing things from the real doctor like: "No, no, don't go so deep on that cut!" "Oh, crap (didn't really say "crap"), don't touch the cornea!" And then from the kid doctor,"Well, my hand's in the way and I can't see what I'm doing".

Remember that Dale, the patient, is awake during all of this. Apparently the doctors think the patient on the table has gone temporarily deaf and can't hear. Also, remember that, even though by this point Dale is wanting to scream, "Take the knife away from the kid and do it yourself, please, Doc!", he has been instructed not to talk. Dale at this point is wondering if he will even have an eye left, let alone be able to see out of it.

Finally, after what seems like forever, they put the patch on his eye and wheel him back into his room. I came in and could tell by looking at him that he had been through the ringer. I wanted to talk to the doctor because I was not very happy with the treatment, but he conveniently was already involved in another surgery.

Next day when we went in for his followup, Doogie Howser (for all you youngsters reading this, that's a reference to a TV show about a teenage doctor years ago) did the check up. He asked Dale how he was doing. Dale said, "I'm alright considering I was traumatized yesterday".  The doc, having no idea what he was talking about said, "Really? Why?"

I wanted to let him have an earful at that point but decided to just zip it and let Dale handle it.

Long story short, miracle of miracles, he can see. Went in for a followup checkup on Monday and the doctor in SLC told him it looked really good.

Next cataract surgery, we think we'll go with the private sector.