The Eye Doctor

 

If bedside manner is a euphemism for “bitch” or “bastard”, then why don’t people just say “bitch” or “bastard” when referring to mean and evil doctors. When I went to see an eye doctor for my Glaucoma and it came up that I had moved to Connecticut recently, he turned to the resident and said, “Isn’t everyone leaving(this was pre covid) Connecticut?” “But we have you,” the eye doctor said, obnoxiously. I quoted the exact number of people who had left – perhaps I had got that info. from google or the radio. And then the eye doctor said again, “But we have you.” I had waited a long time to see him and the drive to his office was over an hour. I told him about a previous doctor I had seen. He told me I should go back to see her. He told me that he knew her. He told me that she was probably closer to where I live then he was. He asked, “Who are you going to pick – me or her?” “You,” I said. Somehow I rationalized that visit and went back again for a second visit wherein the first thing he did upon entering the room was to grab my left shoulder and shove me forward into the machine that eye doctors use to see your eyes with. When I had told the office manager about that, she had been silent for a moment. I had seen her mind ticking and it was reverberating with the words: “lawsuit”, “lawsuit”, “lawsuit”. I think that she was relived when she found out that all that I had wanted was to see another eye doctor, there. On the second visit actually the first thing he asked me, before he shoved me, was if I had seen the other eye doctor. Why would I have seen the other eye doctor and then seen him within the same time framework for seeing one eye doctor. I told him I hadn’t. He was in a documentary where he looked boyish, even though he was in middle age, and acted sweet and kind to other people. He didn’t seem to have dissociative identity disorder but in real life he was thin, and brittle and curt and angry. The documentary hadn’t happened too many years before I’d met him. I couldn’t find an answer for the disparity. He told me that there was an association between Glaucoma and Alzheimer’s. He lead me to believe that if I had Glaucoma, I’d get Alzheimer’s. Recently I read on line in a peer reviewed science journal that there are similarities between the two diseases but there are no associations or connections that any scientist was able to prove. His only motivation was to scare me. At the end of our session when I was still talking, he simply walked out the door and left. I no longer go to that place. I go somewhere else.