Ray, the guy who looks after the Tingle Trust at Morgan Stanley (at least his secretary does), was in the locker room at the club on his way to the pool. His face was all slathered up with sun block because he is fair like me and has a profusion of those so-called pre-cancerous lesions on his cheeks and especially forehead. I told him he should get that chemical salve from the dermatologist.
I did that because of my precancerous lesions. I don’t know what was in that stuff but my forehead where the lesions were swelled up something fierce and then the swollen places popped and started draining so that once my head stuck to my pillow. This went on for about six weeks and then the red stuff went away. And my forehead has been free of those precancerous lesions ever since. But Ray doesn’t like the sound of it and is afraid he will lose a client because the salve might make it appear he has some sort of violent and possibly contagious skin disease.
I guess I am thinking about skin disease because I have to go to the dermatologist today. I got this notice from my primary care person practically ordering me to go see the guy because my dermatologist is a guy. And because about 20 years ago I had an actual cancer cell growing in my upper lip and ever since then they have insisted I go. So I have gone every year pretty faithfully because that cancer cell freaked me out.
Yesterday, I went to the eye doctor. Somehow I forgot my yearly visit to him too. I found out when I went in to have the frames of my glasses readjusted because they were sitting all lopsided on my nose. I guess I sat on the glasses or something—though I don’t know when—and they were really out of whack. So while I was there they checked my records and said it had been 18 months or something since my last check up.
I go to a real eye doctor, an MD. He has all the latest equipment. He has this thing called a retinal maper or something like that. He charges $35 extra for that but I pay anyway because this thing is the best way to detect eye disease. They get this really cool picture of the back of your eyeball, veins and all, and in his one some of my eye lashes too. One time they emailed me the picture in an attachment. But I have lost it. Any way they said that looked good, and then I stared into another machine, and every time something moved on the little screen, I clicked a little clicker to indicate I had detected the movement. I have no idea what this machine is for and I didn’t feel like asking.
Finally, I see the real MD guy and he is nice enough really. Carol and I met him at the club though he has not been going to the club much this last year since his house burnt down. He had a bad year. And maybe for the nth time, I ask about contacts instead of glasses. I don’t know why I bother. I guess I expect some new break through in contact lenses, but again he says I am not a good candidate because one of my eyes is pretty good and the other really sucks, and that makes me a bad candidate I guess.
But I decided to order those lens that go dark out in the sun because I can’t for the life of me remember to carry a pair of shades with me. I need to do that since a lot of sunlight is one of the things that cause macular degeneration. WB had that. But he worked out in the sun too every day and I don’t remember him ever wearing a pair of shades. I wonder why. He had all sorts of precancerous lesions too. His arms didn’t look like normal skin but more like allegator hide. They made him put that salve on every year. I don’t know what good it did except to make it look like allegator hide with a skin disease.
