Idiot Alert Files Update

I started this month out with a new Idiot Files inductee, and I'd like to end the month the same way. Most of the days in between have been spent at a hospital, sitting beside my mother, or helping out an elderly aunt, so this month's entries here have been non-existent. This last entry, however, can not be skipped.
Let me start with Geoff FitzGibbon, director of business operations for the CNIB, who will now be given membership among the ranks of the brain dead. Gushing enthusiasm for the new flagship store opening this week at Toronto's CNIB, he described the items carried at the store by saying, "We've got things here that enhance your vision, or replace your vision." Fitzgibbon, you terminally stupid idiot. NOTHING replaces vision. Think before you open your mouth again and utter such offensive drivel.
The next membership goes out to the MD who is my Aunt's doctor. At the age of 87, she has gone to him concerned with her recent lack of energy and a vague feeling of confusion that bothers her on and off. She told me he said the answer to her problems would be in injections of vitamin B12. Unsure as to whether to have them or not, she asked me to go with her. I asked the doctor the big question, "Are you giving these injections as the result of blood testing indicating a deficiency?" His dumb ass answer makes it clear he's one of those deluded souls sure that MD stands for "medical deity". He said there had been no blood test done, but he was giving the injection because "lots of times it helps the old". You fucking idiot. Obviously, you're one who basically just dismisses the elderly and their concerns. You and your medical brethren who share this attitude of ageism are all forgetting the Hippocratic oath you took. You should all just hope that you are lucky enough to live to such an age. Hope too, that if you do grow old, you don't find yourself in the care of such an uncaring "medical dope" as yourself.

Idiot Alert Files Update

For all his university education, an ophthalmologist is about to be inducted into the ranks of the Idiot Alert Files. Specifically, my ophthalmologist, or more to the point, my former ophthalmologist. I have been his patient for years but my appointment just after Thanksgiving cooked that goose, and you won't find me in his office ever again.
He had told me before, several years ago, about finding a "haze" on my left cornea. Good, precise scientific terminology, that. When I tried to question him about it, he brushed my queries aside with, "It's nothing to worry about." At this latest appointment, he said again that it was there but that it had not changed. When I asked if it were something progressive, he answered in the negative. The only thing is that I could see my file sitting close by and on it were the words "lattice dystrophy". I looked that up when I got home and found it meant "Fine refractile lines in a lattice meshwork appear in the anterior corneal stroma centrally and spread to the periphery."
What the hell, doc? Are you just assuming I'm not capable of understanding that? Are you arrogantly thinking that you have the right to withhold information from me about my own eyes? Are you doing that stupid fucking thing where you people who think MD stands for "medical deity" pat the compliant little patient on the head and send them away none the wiser?
I also noticed, really noticed for the first time how the routine and the machines used in an appointment in his office haven't changed one iota in years, seeming to indicate a man perhaps allowing himself and his practice to fall behind the times. The arms on the patent's chair in the examining room are cracking and showing the stuffing. Not a good sign, especially in the office of a specialist 'cause we all know he makes quite sufficient to spend a little more on his office; unless he's letting the place run down while he coasts toward retirement. If that is indeed the case, then every one of his patients should desert that sinking ship before it takes them and their vision down with it. We each get one pair of eyes, one pair only, and to have someone like him messing around with them, with his nonchalant, who-gives-a-shit attitude should scare anyone whose eye care he is following.
I had to wait almost five months to see this idiot, but I was hoping for him to give me a new prescription to help with vision changes. When I tried to question him about the change I had noticed, and I am after all the one who looks out through this particular set of eyes each and every day, he just kept repeating like a worn-out mantra that my numbers had not changed. He offered no informative response to any of my questions. No, wait a minute, he did remind me once that I already knew my left eye was "wonky". I suppose there might be some who would wonder how much more info I could need than "wonky". I just expect someone who was for a time the head of ophthalmology at a local hospital to use terms a little more , oh, perhaps a little more scientific than that idiocy. I know ... how unreasonable and demanding!
On the advice of my GP, I went today to see an optometrist who works at a clinic where the differences from the idiot's office and practice were eye-opening, indeed.
First of all, every machine against which I was asked to press my face was first wiped with a disinfectant wipe. That's not done in the idiot's office. With a machine entirely new to me, pictures (baseline) were taken of my retinas. That's not done in the idiot's office. Every question I asked was answered with a full explanation, using proper terms. That's not done in the idiot's office. An explanation of varying options in lenses and how they might better suit my needs was undertaken. That's not done in the idiot's office.
At no point did I ask for a new prescription but I was sent away with one, after being told that the new numbers, although not a drastic change, would help me to feel "a little more like I was seeing life" with greater ease and clarity. Sometimes a little can be a lot.
I am sure Mr. I-Know-More-Than-You would look down his ophthalmic nose at the optometrist I saw today, but I came away feeling myself to have been treated with more respect, feeling more sure of having received quality care than I have for some time.