Design Evolution In The Cataract Monocle

[anthropositor]

It has been ten days since my last post on this thread.  In that post I gave myself the answer I needed, or part of it.  I didn't notice.  Of course that often happens, but it sure is annoying to realize it.  I can only excuse myself to myself by realizing how little attention I have paid to the iris.  My attention has been on the lens and the immediate surrounding structures; the lens capsule, the zonules of Zinn, etc.


The fact that I am so naturally monocular contributed to my failure to immediately realize what I needed to do, totally occult the other eye mechanically to tweak another chunk of acuity out of the better eye.  I could get maybe another few months of reasonable vision from doing it, so I just made it.  Took me a fraction of the time it takes me to make a monocle.  No real precision involved.  I could do it with my eyes closed.

Since no ophthalmologist has shown any curiosity about the cataract monocle, and since no cataract patient has realized the value of delaying cataract surgery as I have, when I do get the cataract on the first eye done, I will toss these monocles in the trash and turn my attention to other more fruitful endeavors.

[anthropositor]

I must admit a certain sadness that I have produced something which has been quite useful to me as a cataract impaired individual, that no other cataract impaired person has signified any interest.

I must admit it is something of an enigma to me, but if there is anything an inventor needs to do, it is to face the facts.  To do otherwise is to suffer from the worst disease that can strike an innovator.  It is called the "proud papa syndrome."  The notion that the world will, of course, beat a path to your door to get your new widget.

And by far, most inventors seek and ultimately get, costly patents on innovations that never see the light of day in the marketplace at all.    And considering the loss of potential profits to ophthalmic surgeons, it is really hard to blame them for turning a blind eye to the possibilities here.  It would certainly not be in their best interests to investigate something which would sharply drop the volume of operations that are now their main bread and butter, or perhaps I should say, their caviar and cream cheese.  These "entitlements" are so enticing to the doctor, and he is so insulated from the actual hardships his patients face because of the onerous fees he and virtually all his colleagues regard as their natural right, the subject of money need never enter his mind.  His billing staff deals with all of that.

The associated innovation of the anti-glare device also does not promise to do too much to enhance their practices from a pecuniary perspective.  Indirectly, the complete apathy of this branch of medicine does me a favor.  It reminds me that, whatever the platitudes that we have all absorbed about the selfless dedication of all doctors, it is, after all, business.  And they are very much too big, and I am very much too small, for me to be likely to do too much about it.  So there is an end to it.

On the good side, aside from my lifetime of general education, and my particular focus on the parameters of the senses, I have really only put several hundred hours into working these devices out and producing them for my own benefit.  They did benefit me greatly. 

Even without helping anyone else, I personally have profited enough from them in the quality of my life, and the ability to hold off on surgery during a period of extreme flux in the state of the art.

And I am still, even at this stage, continuing to tweak, shooting for a few more months of use before one of my eyes gets done.

I am less sanguine about the ophthalmic surgical world in general, particularly with my experiences with Dr. Baltz, and more recently with my attempt to contact Dr. Brodsky.  His good reputation and his subspecialty in neurology made him of particular interest to me.  And had he ever learned of them, my experimental work with the dark adapted eye during semi consciousness for these past nine years or so, would probably have been of keen interest.  In recent weeks I have been speculating about some endocrinology implications as well. 

So, even after a thousand or more times, I am still drawing new implications and hypotheses from the exercise.  As things stand, if I should happen to croak, the whole set of results will just die with me.  I have committed nothing to notes.  And it certainly would not do to tell test subjects what to expect when they engage in the process.  It would jaundice the results.

There is no way to tell how many others have taken their ideas to the grave, either because of persecution, or a complete lack of interest.

Over the years, I have tried to get selected others to try the same experiments, but no one has yet managed.  From my perspective it is not all that difficult, but it does require thought during a semiconscious state.  Nothing complicated.  Just some observations with the eyes closed.  I figured a young genius named Nicholas would do it, but he left the temporal realm rather unexpectedly about a day after some lightning struck a tree a few feet from his house.  Just an odd coincidence I suppose.

[CazAngel]

Interesting observations. 

[anthropositor]

Thanks Caz.  I wish I could sustain a more cheerful note, but this blindness thing is fatiguing.  It really cuts into my enjoyment of faces, and seriously slows my reading.  I now read even larger print at about a third of the speed of my thinking.

But I enjoy music to a much greater depth.  There is always a good side.  Sometimes it takes a little searching to find it.

[anthropositor]

Well, although the eye has lost a little more acuity in the past few weeks, I'm still able to tweak the monocle and get a little improvement in detail.  But doing it loses me some previous scope in peripheral vision.

I am back to thinking of some of the other positives of slow loss of sight.  The sense of balance is better.  And you pay more attention to what you are doing, particularly when walking on uneven terrain.

But it is nice that I am still able to tweak these various monocles and get some additional value out of them.  Not for much longer though.  My choice will soon be, get one eye's cataract replaced with an IOL.  That will give me some years before the second eye.  Even this past two years of delay has seen at least one "new and improved" phacoemulsification system come on the market.

What I would like to see is, the more stable haptics of the sort that are on several of the accomodating lenses and pseudo-accommodating lenses, but with the more economical single focus lens.  Plus, since I am not binocular by nature, there is no reason not to shoot for 20/15 in the right eye.  By the time I get it done, the left eye will be fogged enough to cause little distraction, even if my brain didn't just blank it out.

Time to go teach chess.