Getting Better

One of my friends supplied me with somelinks that in essence said I was barking up a wrong tree. The links were useful in a variety of ways and I appreciated them, but still had some caveats. This was my response:

Hello Bunnie, These links are interesting and useful. I notice, though that the first link only devotes a paragraph to the lens. The other major components of the eye get much more attention.

I think this is a significant indicator of the mindset that prevails in the cataract removal industry. And it is not just this link that does this. You can get a lot more detail about every other significant eye part, with a lot less hunting.

Could this be because it is the only "routine" for cataracts, to just "amputate" the lens and insert a prosthetic lens? If it is going to just be chopped out and replaced, there is little to be gained by knowing a lot about it's structure.

And one of the other links calls it a "myth" that interventions such as eyedrops or nutritional supplements or dietary changes, or for that matter, any intervention at all, short of surgery will do any good at all.

To me the word myth is quite a strong one. I do not think it applies when it simply has not been established that the variety of other interventions are of incontrovertable value.

Without opening another can of worms in another branch of surgical intervention, cardiology, findings were recently published that perhaps half of one variety of procedure were next to useless or completely useless. This procedure has been done hundreds of thousands of times every year in the Unites States alone. I doubt that refunds will be offerred.

Getting back to cataracts, a number of months ago, I was attempting to use some nonsurgical interventions to at least stabilize or perhaps reverse the effects of a cataract on vision. After several weeks, I couldn't see any obvious improvement. I was doing several different things at the same time. When I didn't see evidence of improvement over a period of a month or so, I became less and less interested in continuing. But in retrospect, I do not really think I gave the things I was doing enough of a trial.

The cataract took years and years to develop, without my even noticing it until it was pretty well advanced. So the deterioration from month to month was exceedingly subtle. Not only that, I had not calibrated a measurement system, with which I could make a baseline measurement which would later help me to assess changes. I set about doing that.

Furthermore, I wanted to produce a device with which I could assess some of the glare affects of the cataract on night vision with some precision. So I set about doing that as well. That is pretty technical and hard to discuss, so I will leave the glare issue aside.

So let us look at both clarity of vision and the ability to percieve different colors. I additionally decided that it was better to have a measurement that used images produced by emitted light rather than reflected light. So a TV screen or a computer screen were the obvious choices. But of course, one can't easily control what is going to occur on the TV screen and repeatability, to be able to replicate with great precision, the image that was going to be used for the testing purposes was absolutely essential.

So I began casting about for an image on the computer screen which I could reliably replicate at will, which would be absolutely replicatible down to the finest detail every time I wanted it, which also included a variety of colors and sizes of print, highly contrasting from the background.
When I first turn on the computer, I get a blue screen. It is replaced by the Windows XP symbol and lettering on a black screen which is too large for my purposes and quickly spontaneously disappears as the computer finishes booting up.

But later on, if I get distracted by anything, and do nothing with the computer or touch the mouse, a much smaller version of this logo becomes a screensaver, with three very different sizes of white lettering on a black background "Windows" the largest, with an orange XP; underneath that, "Home Edition" in medium print, and the smallest, above windows, "Microsoft."
Now I needed to make a precise distance measurement. One which would allow me to see the large and the medium copy pretty well, but would only allow me to nearly resolve the smallest word. Measuring from my forhead to the screen with a seven inch spacer, I was able to easily read Windows XP and Home Edition, but Microsoft was just a blur in which I could resove none of the letters clearly. The M looked to me more like a V. The ft at the other end, I could make out that they were taller letters than those of the interior of the word, but couldn't see what they were, and the short interior letters were just a line of fog. Perfect.

I didn't note the date, but it was right after my computer crash. Now it has been several weeks. Not a long time, but not a short time either. Only now, I am quite prepared to be more patient. I now have a pretty clear baseline measurement. It has already been demonstrably important.

You see, now when I put my face a measured seven inches from the screen, I can resolve the M clearly and the ft only slightly less clearly. Sorry to say that the interior of the word is still not legible to me, but this is progress over a very short timespan.
Now it is true, I have also been working on my blood pressure and the aftermath of my stroke, so I have been doing a great variety of things for my health. And although some of those things were specifically designed to deal with the cataract, there is no way I can isolate them out and say "these are the things that helped my eyes." So, from a medical or scientific point of view, this is just anecdotal nonsense.

Just as nonsensical I suppose as only respecting the results of "double blind" studies in which neither the doctors nor the subjects know during the study who is actually getting the study drug and who is getting the placebo. This is of statistical value, but your chance of getting better is cut to 50% even before the use of the study drug. All in the name of the great god science.

I think I will just settle for getting better.
Anthro