CHAIRSIDE

Too Much Stuff, Even for Me

by Montgomery Vickers, O.D.

Hear that sound? It's the sound of bacon burning. Either that, or it's my brain sizzling.

I am approaching a temporary (I hope) burnout. Too much input into my feeble mind. I have caulked my synapses, and my brain looks like a honeydew melon rather than a proverbial prune.

Too much knowledge. I cannot possibly cram one more tidbit of information into my stuffed melon, yet there's topography and bifocal contacts and Cox-2 inhibitors and Windows 2000 and so on. Can't you people quit inventing things until I figure out last year's wave? I'm still trying to figure out how a Chia Pet works, and you want me to understand latanoprost.

Too much family. My kids' high school tennis program is blurring into SATs and college searches and dates for the prom. My mother-in-law is acting goofy after surgery and Dad's diabetes. No time for my own scheduled heart attack this week.

Too many contact lenses. I know. YOUR lab is the best, and everyone else is a dirty sack of pond scum. But may I please get rid of the 9 million lenses I have in stock before I save eye care as we know it by paying YOU for a few thousand more to put God knows where? Oh, you'll send me a new lens rack? Thanks. I'll put it in the garage with my other 10 new lens racks.

Too many patients. Be efficient, do more exams, work in those red eyes. (Tell them to come right in, or they'll get well before I see them!) But, assistants, don't forget to give me crap when I get behind. Perhaps I should have left that bug's wing embedded in the kid's carbuncle in order to get back on schedule, so the lady who always gets glasses at the mall won't get her pinguecula in a wad, right?

Too many refractive surgeons. All the sudden, I'm Dr. Popular, and Oh-M.D.s who told the governor, just last month, that all optometrists are idiots now want to take me to dinner and spend more money on me in one night than what they deserve for post-op care. You know, for the time I spend explain-ing to the post-LASIK patient why the surgeon/god left one eye -1.50D so he won't need a bifocal when he's 40, which is 20 years from now.

Too many piles of stuff. For the record, for all who will listen, please take note: I do not want any more professional journals that are bigger than my desk! I won't fill out the card for my free subscription. And, stop delivering those glossy, stinky, 100-page advertisements for glasses that they wouldn't wear on Venus in the year 3456 A.D. Brothers and sisters of the eye, repeat after me: "I only want Review of Optometry and its affiliated sisters."

Too many meals. There's gotta be something wrong with my washing machine; it's making my pants shrink. Stop it! And send cake!

Too many doc-in-a-box diagnoses. Actually, this may be good. Just today I saw two patients whose eye pains had been differentially misdiagnosed with a penlight and a Burton lamp. I may hang up a sign that says: "Our office continues to grow thanks to screw-ups at the local doc-in-a-box."

Too much cheer. The next time I hear my staff laughing like hyenas in the front office at the same time I'm sweating bullets over a toric contact lens fit who's in for the 11th pair and still can't see, I'm gonna spontaneously combust.

Too many conventions. Just send me the Caribbean stuff. I pro-mise that I am still, after 20 years of mailings, not going to the American Academy of Ophthalmology's meeting in Podunk, Egypt, entitled, "Kill All Optometrists!"

Too many obituaries. Eye doctors see a lot of old folks, and they think it's funny to pass away the night before their check-ups. So when I call to see why the hell the patient missed the ap-pointment, I get the verbal equivalent of a wedgie from the spouse.

Too much caffeine. I guess you could tell... So, you plan to bring me something else right now? Let the door hit you where the dog bit you.

Send Dr. Vickers more stuff at Review of Optometry, 201 King of Prussia Road, Radnor, PA 19089; or e-mail it to him at reviewofoptometry@jobson.com. 

I am psycho, not psychic.