HEALTH
RICHARD BERCUSON
Eyes? They get zero
pizazz The lightning flashes were
infrequent, yet troublesome. But there were two problems. First,
I was indoors. Second, the skies were clear.
And that’s when I decided it was
time to visit the eye doctor. A clarification: my appointment had
nothing to do with the suggestion I suffer from rectaloculosis. That’s a syndrome in which the ocular nerve becomes entangled with the rectal nerve, resulting in a crappy outlook on life. It did make me wonder, though, how we should pay more attention to our
eyes. Shouldn’t they at least be on the same importance-scale as athlete’s foot or hair loss? Visiting the eye doctor requires no exposure of body parts and no embarrassing weigh- in. You walk in; the doctor tinkers with cool gadgets; you walk out just as healthy, except for needing glasses so you can tell unaided if the toilet seat is up or down. My theory about why we don’t go to the
eye doctor as often as we should has to do with the profession’s image. For instance, is your eye doctor an optometrist or an ophthalmologist? I remain confused. That’s just poor marketing. I know all too well what my urologist does and I never confuse him with my gastroenterologist, even though they both deal with my innards. (And outwards.) Maybe there’s another reason. I used to
go to an eye doctor whose personality lacked, shall we say, flare. This wasn’t a case of a man who’d forsaken social interaction for immersion in his medical books. Nor was he just having a bad day. My whole family went to him − on
different days. It was unanimous. He had more in common with the smallest letters on the eye chart: Unreadable. Unfathomable. Uninteresting in every way. I never did read the chart properly. I fell asleep listening to his breathing. This is not to say doctors need to have the
wit of Robin Williams or even the scratchy bedside manner of TV’s Dr. House. But they ought to have a pulse. Even dental hygienists attempt light conversation. “So, Mr. Bercuson, how was your
Christmas?” (as the polisher whizzes across my teeth and the suction instrument vacuums up the morning’s breakfast) “Oo, ank. I ay ome a e-axed. Id ome
eading. A ice.” “That’s lovely.” Eye doctors, though, don’t kibitz. Your G.P. will kibitz sometime between the blood
8 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
continued on page 32
www.bounder.ca
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