During the last West Virginia Optometric Association convention, my good friend Dr. B.J. Nibert and I were standing at the top of the stairs in the Charleston Marriott. Ever observant and facile, Dr. Nibert says
You know, I noticed there are just not that many of the old guys around at these meetings anymore.
I didnt have the heart to tell him that the two young doctors who walked by us had just said
You know, everywhere I look I just see old guys standing around at these meetings.
Its all a matter of your perspective your point of view your optozeitgeist.
Contacts: Then and Now
When I started in optometry and a patient wanted a soft contact lens, there was, well, one to choose from. Piece of cake. Throw a PMMA hard lens on one eye and the only available soft lens on the other. OK, which do you prefer? Intense pain or chronic tickle?
Well, even the patients perspective has changed. Now, they come in asking to try non-ionic instead of ionic. They are miffed when they are 20/20 in the right eye and 20/15 in the left because the right eye is blurry.
Thats before LASIK. After LASIK, they come in 20/50 O.D. and 20/40 O.S. and they have never seen better! Is that a shift in perspective or what?
The Day I Save the Universe
Perspective changes, constantly.
I blame computers. Press a button. Solve a problem. Or, in my case, press a button. Create a problem. My son tells me that I have radiation that emits from my fingers which damages computers. Thats his perspective.
I see it differently. My ability to crash computers will someday save the universe when Satan finally comes on our screens to demand our souls and, at that moment, I check my e-mail and bring down the whole system.
My son is sick of fixing my computer. I am planning to save the universe. It is a matter of perspective.
How about the staff member who sees the days schedule implode with cancellations and is elated because now she can get some work done around here?
At Pennsylvania College of Optometrynow a part of
Perspective. No people, no income, folks.
Even that is only one perspective. How about those patients with diabetes who dont come in to see you every year because they are afraid youll find something? Well, I guess theyll figure it out themselves when its way too late to treat it, right? Nothing like an eye that becomes awash with random fluids to change your perspective.
One time when my son, then a teenager, was being a pill (as we say in Fayette County), I asked him, Sonny, if you saw a stranger standing on the railroad and a train was coming at him, would you at least holler at him?
To me, thats one perspective. Another is to let the train run him over. Hed learn not to stand on tracks then, wouldnt he?
Life is full of crazy crap. I always think of that great philosopher, Michael J. Fox. When the neurologist told him that he had Parkinsons disease, the first thing that popped into his head was, This is not going to be boring.
Good perspective!
