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The eyes have it: another health-care nightmare

This being a business paper, I will mention that I don�t fear death, anyway not as much as I fear getting into the hands of the Old Folks Industry.

This being a business paper, I will mention that I don�t fear death, anyway not as much as I fear getting into the hands of the Old Folks Industry.

Moving on, I am about to have cataract surgery. The day approaches with indecent speed. I have confided my uneasiness to my wife, family, fellow bus passengers, buskers, a wrong number in Greece (where the answerer thought I was offering to send money).

I tried to inject a little light-heartedness into the matter. I asked: �Doctor, will I be able to read piano music after this operation?�

�Of course,� the doctor replied.

�That�s funny, I can�t read it now,� I chortled, slapping my knee and his, not necessarily in that order.

The doctor was unmoved, though he shifted his knee. Apparently he had heard variations of this joke before.

Those who have had this surgery told me: Nothing to it. This only increased my panic. Statistically, it was time for luck to run out, meaning mine. �Hmmm, this one is more difficult than I expected,� says the doctor, bending over my prone body. �The whole eye�ll have to come out. Rather unsightly. Anyone in the room with a marble in their pocket?�

Finished, he wipes the Gillette Blue Blade and the coffee spoon on his sleeve and absent-mindedly flips them into a box marked �Finest Swedish Steel Tools.�

�When I was a kid we called them alleys,� chuckled a colleague who was sawing off the bottom of a Coke bottle for the eyeglass of a patient evidently with advanced spectacle needs. He nods with annoyance at the operating room window. There is a lineup of horizontal persons outside the door. With my remaining eye I can see a bored-looking woman scratching down something on a clipboard.

�Damned health ministry people,� grumbles the one grinding the Coke bottle bottom into a semblance of an eyeglass lens. �She would be doing a time study on this operating room.�

He stared malevolently at me.

�Thanks to you, sir, you�ll raise our average time for this operation above the Ministry Standard Requirement of two minutes.�

�Yes, by at least another 26 seconds,� my doctor says irritably. �We were ahead by 19 seconds. Now we�ll lose the lead to Operating Room Five. They�re already beating us in Staff Bowling.�

I began snivelling.

�Never mind, there are advantages, you know,� says the Coke-bottle man in his best cheery bedside manner.

He rattles something, and I can turn just enough to see he�s making a selection from a rack of white canes.

�There�s a sturdy one,� says my doctor. He turns to me. �Squint at the bright side, sir. You�ll get preferred treatment. You�ll be able to park in the Disabled stalls anywhere in town.�

�We are never sent a burden too heavy for us to bear,� philosophizes a grey-haired, very large nurse with a tic, whom I�d hardly noticed.

A second nurse, a slim blonde I�d definitely noticed, shyly nods.

The doctor pats my shoulder. �There once was a man who had no shoes. He felt sorry for himself, until he met a man who had no legs.�

He smiled revengefully as if getting back at me for my piano-music joke.

�Enough chatter, it�s coffee break,� said the other man, hastily following the departing nurses. The grey-haired one comes back looking puzzled, as if she�s forgotten something. Right, me. She starts wheeling me out. The blonde nurse pauses, apparently waiting fetchingly for my doctor.

�I had a long lunch,� he tells her. �You go along, I can handle this lineup myself, and I want to catch up to Operating Room Five anyway.� He waves me a transparently insincere goodbye. �Next!�

I woke up screaming, eyes wide shut.��