Rant #3,993: Eyes Without a Face

Eye, eye, eye, eye, eye!

I regret to report to you that I am going to undergo eye surgery on September 21 to repair a partially torn retina.

The beat goes on with me in 2026, a year where one thing gets fixed and then another thing pops up to frustrate me.

And it is just so frustrating.

I had three surgeries to correct one thing, had cancer taken off my scalp, and had several other issues that were just beginning to heal, and now I have this thing to contend with.

I have actually had this problem for several months, but I put off getting it repaired because, quite frankly, I was in no condition to go through this surgery.

I was weak from the other surgeries, and the bad right eye didn't really impede me from doing much of anything.

In fact, as you know, my family and I just came home from vacation, and I drove 2,100 miles without any problems.

But now that I am supposedly back together again, it is time to get this thing done.

There are two options: a "bubble" procedure, where this is implanted in the eye, and a "gel" procedure, where this is also implanted in the eye.

Both are good for me, but my doctor and I are going for the "gel" procedure, because it takes much less time for healing ...

But the negative is that it will take another procedure to get the gel out of my eye over time.

All told, once I have the procedure done, I will need constant followups, and after about six months, I will supposedly be good to go.

In the meantime, the gel procedure will allow me to do my work, to drive, and to do what I need to do, and do it more rapidly than the bubble procedure would allow.

So we are leaning toward the gel procedure, but my doctor will have the final say.

During this period, I will be in and out of this Blog at regular intervals, but i am certainly not going to give it up.

I will let you know when that happens.

This has just been a terrible year for myself and my family, and I really cannot wait for 2026 to be over and done with.

Heck, I still have to go for followups and other things that have ailed me during this year--including things that were operated on--so I am not completely out of the woods on those things just yet.

And let me tell you, all of this has prepared me for ANYTHING.

I have learned that you have no idea what is going on in your body at any given time, and that upkeep is the key.

Yes, it is all frustrating and depressing at the same time, but hopefully, the eye procedure--yes, it is surgery--will be the final such thing I will have to go through in the immediate future.

I was the guy who was never sick, never injured, pretty much healthy my entire life, but the last couple of years have been a collective nightmare ...

And at this juncture, I don't know which way is up.

I just know that I have to get this done now, because if I don't, it can lead to a fully torn retina, and I don't want that.

So I am not happy right now, but at least I know that this will get done and that hopefully, I won't have to worry about it ever again.

There are no guarantees, either.

And to add to my current splendor, this problem could have been due to my lenses.

Not necessarily a misdiagnosis, but the lenses I have might have strained my right eye to the point that the retina tore.

I got those new lenses about three years ago, when I was seen not by my regular eye doctor, but another doctor in the same practice who had not seen me before.

I had an appointment with my regular doctor, but unbeknownst to me, he had to leave that particular day for whatever reason, and instead of making another appointment with him--I found out he wasn't there when I arrived at the office--I elected to go with this other doctor, who I had not seen before.

My mistake ... but who knew?

And my regular eye doctor has now retired, so I will never be in his care again.

So that is where I stand now.

I am nervous ...

No, make that petrified ...

But I will get through it.

I am prepared ...

So let's go!

Rant #3,992: See

Today, I have to go to the special eye doctor to see where I stand with my right eye, which has a partially torn retina in it.

Honestly, I am completely torn--yes, there is that word again--about getting the procedure done and letting it go.

Yes, my vision is not as good in the right eye as it was before this thing happened--I have no idea how it happened--but I have managed pretty well, even with the bad eye.

I have been able to do my work, drive, drive at night, read the newspaper ...

Basically do everything I had done before this happened.

Heck, I just drove 2,100 miles, and I seemed to manage pretty well.

So, do I get this done or do I not get this done, at least right now?

I just don't know.

I do know that the surgery takes about 40 minutes, and the way it was described to me, some type of bubble gets placed in the eye, and I have to really do nothing for at least five days, other than keep my head low so the bubble can do its job.

Then, I can gradually return to normal, with increased activity.

There is no assurance that this will work, by the way, so it is a crapshoot, even if I have the surgery.

It took three surgeries on the same area to fix my other major problem, so I am not immune to doing what it takes to fix a physical problem.

But with the eyes, I admit it is a different thing altogether, and I have to ask myself if it is worth the toil and trouble, at least right now.

I want my vision to be what it was, but is this procedure worth it to me so much that I get it done right now?

I just don't know.

I have been going back and forth on this, and I still have not come to a conclusive answer.

I think the best thing to do is to talk with the doctor, see what she has to say about it, and go from there.

Yes, another surgery would be nerve wracking, but it would be for my betterment.

But this is elective surgery, and I have proven that I can live with what I have now ...

Again, it could get worse--complete retinal detachment--if I put things off too long, so maybe now is the time to get this done.

We will see ...

With "see" being the operative word.

I want to give my eyes a rest, so this will be my final Rant for this week.

Have a great weekend, and I should be back in the saddle on Monday.

"See" you then ...

I hope.

Rant #3,991: Come Home

Yes, my family's vacation has come to a close.

We finally got back to our home on Monday afternoon at about 3 p.m., and between the beginning of the trip and the end of it, we drove more than 2,100 miles, give or take.

It was fun, but the moment we got back to our home, we all jumped into work mode and my wife, son and I had plenty to do to return to a semblance of normalcy.

Me ... yes, I had work, and I think I caught up on Tuesday morning, but I had a lot of other things to do, in particular with one of the banks I use.

Right before we left--and on a Sunday, when this particular bank is not open--I found a huge error that this bank made with one of the checks that I deposited into it about a month ago.

My bank account was awry for the past month, and a lot of it had to do with the non-delivery/delivery problems I have had with things that I ordered online.

So I gave it a few weeks to iron itself out, but it never did, and on the day before we left, I found out why.

I use another bank for some of my accounts, and I made out a check for a certain amount to be deposited into the bank in question to help pay our rent.

I do this every month without problem, but this time, the bank in question made a tremendous error--

They deposited about one-tenth of my check's amount into my rent account instead of the amount I wrote on my check ...

And since it was related to rent, you can imagine what a problem that caused for me.

I had plenty of money in the rent account, so I covered the latest rent payment fine, but it threw off the balances of my regular account at one bank and the rent account at the bank in question.

So the first thing I did when we arrived home was to go to the bank in question and sort the whole thing out ...

And they told me that since a month had elapsed, I should simply write a new check, including the difference, and deposit that check into the rent account.

Yes, they did apologize for this error, and yes, the fault was at least partly mine, because I did not check the receipt as thoroughly as I normally do--

But it created a kerfuffle that took me a few hours to rectify.

I had to rewrite my registers to reflect all of this mess--including the returned monies from the orders that I had a problem with--and I am still not 100-percent sure if everything adds up, but I think I did it right.

Then we had the mail ...

I put in to have the mail stopped for the period that we were gone for, but evidently, doing it online was not the way to go, as they never stopped the mail during the period.

Just on a whim, I opened up the mailbox, and lo and behold, the box was brimming with stuff, mostly garbage mail but some important stuff too.

I wonder if they stopped someone else's mail for this period instead of ours ... but stopping the mail online did not do the trick.

Thank goodness newspaper delivery started again on Tuesday morning ...

At least that went right!

I guess doing that over the phone was the right way to go.

Anyway, about the vacation ...

Yes, by the time we got home, we kind of needed a vacation from the vacation.

Lots of driving here, there and everywhere, and I found that to be fun.

Except on Sunday night, when we came closer to home in droves of rain, and that was difficult, to say the least.

But it was good to get away, see a different part of our country, see relatives who just recently moved to these new environs, and enjoy "southern hospitality," so to speak.

This is a huge country, a wonderful country, the best country in the world, and to discover new parts of our country while on vacation was a great thing to do.

And I listened to so much music that I programmed on my little thumb drive--nearly 800 songs during the entirely of the trip--that it kept me going full throttle.

It was a fun couple of days away--even thought I had to work throughout the trip--and it provided some good memories for us.

But now, it is back to the same-old-same-old, and my son went back to work yesterday, I seemingly work 24/7, and the first thing my wife did when we go home is do the drudgery of the wash.

So it is good to be home, but I just wish we could all be on a permanent vacation from chores and duties and work and everything else ...

Which isn't happening anytime soon.

Rant #3,990: V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N

2026 has been a rough year for myself, and my family.

I have had numerous health problems, and other problems, which have made this year torture. 

And what's worse, we still have August, September, October, November and December to go before we can put 2026 into the books.

I simply cannot wait for this year to end!

In May, after my third major surgery in three months, my wife asked me if we could go on vacation this year.

I told her that while I would love to get away, I just didn't know yet if I was up to it.

It took a few weeks, I got my strength and my bearings back, and about a month ago, I gave her the thumb's up to get away.

And that is just what we are going to do!

It isn't a long vacation--we will just be away for a few days--but it will be nice getting away and trying to relax.

And we aren't going that far away, relative to other vacations we have experienced in the past.

I still have to work, so I will be bringing my computer with me, but all in all, my family and I need a vacation, and we are finally going to get one.

It should be a fun one, certainly more fun than going under the knife.

So I won't be at this perch for a few days, a relative blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again when we get home.

Bon voyage!

Rant #3,989: Shower Me With Your Love

I told you the other day about the hate I received from a few people on Facebook, hate that was actually racist and anti-Jewish.

And the moderator, who really should know better, allowed it to fester, gave his thumb's up to it--

And banned me, not the perpetrators.

I Facebook messaged him, and he still has not responded, and probably never will, because he knows that I was the victim here--

But in order to placate his comrades in arms, he had to get rid of me.

What a fool he is.

And just when things were simmering down, I received another rebuke from someone on a completely different subject.

A subject that is so insipid that I really have to wonder about people and how they fill their days with such joy.

I belong to many groups on Facebook, some of them related to the old, classic "Leave it To Beaver" TV show.

A respondent on one of these sites posted something about the "Larry Mondello" character--you remember, the chubby, apple-eating counterpart of "The Beaver" that was played by kid actor Rusty Stevens--that was so ridiculous, so vulgar, and so out of left field that I had to respond.

To summarize, he felt that the reason that Mondello's mom--played by Madge Blake--was so old was that she was not, in fact, his mother, but his grandmother, and that Mondello's sister was actually the mother, having the child out of wedlock as a teen.

And this wasn't just a two- or three-sentence harangue, as it went on for probably a few hundred words.

Well, you can overanalyze a TV show all you want, and some people question why this and that happened ...

And others can say that this is a 70-year old TV show--operative phrase, TV show--and that to compare it with the mores of 2026 are ridiculous.

That is the tack I took when I read this malarkey, and I simply said that the writer should get a hobby, or something, for posting such trash.

That was a few days ago, and I received a Facebook message from someone who took me to task for what I said.

"I find it quite sad that you would take the time to be so negative. Stop and think about how your comment might effect someone. Is it worth it? You don't like it, scroll on. Why be so mean?"

First off, I had absolutely no idea what post or site this message was referring to, so I wrote the person--who had a name that was not clearly a man or a woman.

"What message are you referring to?"

Then on Tuesday, I received back this message from the person.

"I'm sorry, it was remarks to xxxx in "The Leave It To Beaver" group. I shouldn't have messaged you, I apologize, everyone has a right to say and type as they please. XXXX is my husband and the reactions ... well, bothered him."

So I wrote back to this person, now that I knew what she was referring to.

"The original message [from your husband] bothered me. Apology accepted."

I mean, what was I going to say to this person?

I have noticed that people are very, very thin-skinned on Facebook, yet they are quick to be on the attack if something riles them, as happened with the banishment that I told you about.

But this latest one ...

I mean c'mon now!

This has nothing to do with anything important, and I get attacked for it as if I am chiding someone for their thoughts on world peace!

I guess that it is clearly open season on me, or something like that.

However, I think that with social media such a major part of many of our lives, people have forgotten how to have a discussion, a real give-and-take about things that are on their mind.

I certainly saw it in my banishment, and I saw it to this lesser rake-over-the-coals, too.

Discussions have no place on social media.

Apparently, you are either on "my" side or you don't have the right to respond in any way, shape or form.

Balderdash, I say, and I will keep speaking my mind, whether anyone likes it or not, and whether the subject is an important one or the subject is "Leave It To Beaver."

As was said on the show--

"Give someone the brush off and make it sound like you're doing 'em a favor."

Rant #3,988: I Can See Clearly Now (Not Yet)

Things have settled down a bit from Monday's craziness ...

But when your entire life is crazy, nothing really gets back to what I would call a sense of normalcy.

I went to the eye doctor on Tuesday to get the latest check up on my eye, and believe me, there were no surprises to me during the appointment.

The eye needs to be repaired, and I will get that done as soon as I can.

My whole body needs to be in check after what I have already gone through this year.

And I have two weddings to look forward to, and I want to be able and healthy when those events come up in September and October.

When I think about my damaged eye, the song "I Can See Clearly Now" by Johnny Nash comes to mind.

This song was a huge single in 1972, hitting the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in late summer of that year.

And the lyrics kind of go with what I am currently going through, if you want to stretch things a bit.

Here they are, from the AZLyrics.com site (https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnnynash/icanseeclearlynow.html).

"I can see clearly now, the rain has gone

I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun-shining day
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun-shining day

I think I can make it now, the pain has gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is that rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun-shining day

Look all around, there's nothing but blue sky
Look straight ahead, nothing but blue sky

I can see clearly now, the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone're the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun-shining day
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun-shining day
Gonna be a bright, bright sun-shining day
Gonna be a bright, bright, bright sun-shining day."

Yes, if you stretch things, the song is almost prophetic when it comes to my malady.

Now, I have to get this thing fixed.

What's another surgery when you have had several of them already this year?

I guess that is how I have to look at this whole thing now ...

Just another speed bump on my road to good health.

And something I just have to do, sooner than later.

Rant #3,987: Knock Knock, Who's There?

Yesterday was a typical day for me.

Even early on, before many people were up and about, I was attacked as being a racist and a bigot for views that I posted on Facebook.

I was banned by someone who should know better, but sticks up for his "friends" because they and he are, in fact, the real racists and bigots.

You have to wonder about some people, you really do.

Here is what i had to say about the matter on Facebook:

"I was just banned from a Facebook site because I voiced an opinion that was not popular among other respondents.

This has happened to me before, and I am not going to hold back when I believe something is very wrong.

The difference this time is that I was dumped on because of my skin color and religion.

Other respondents wrote some of the most vile, disgusting posts I have ever seen, and they were clearly directed at me--

And they were made by people who ... well ... are of a certain "persuasion," let's say.

Nothing was done to them, but I was dumped.

That is fine. I am a big boy, and I can take it.

But let's say that segregation went out decades ago, but the person who leads this "discussion," if that is what you want to call it, practices the very thing he so preaches against.

And yes, he is from my old neighborhood in Queens, as are some of the respondents who raked me over and into the hot coals.

How dare they do this to me, and I will say it again:

If "All in the Family" was on the air today, Archie Bunker would not be what he was 50 years ago. 

I will let you figure out exactly what I mean, but I think it is pretty obvious."

Some more ...

I discovered that the post office in my community had my address wrong (no, that would not have impacted the deliveries that I told you about, because the deliverer had the correct address).

And, I had to change a major medical appointment that I had coming up, because the doctor won't be at the office on the original date.

And all of this happened before 8 a.m. in the morning.

What else could happen during the rest of the day?

Look, I know that there is some type of dark cloud hovering over me, and it has been there for months.

Something weird is happening, and while I look up and there is nothing there, there is something happening that I don't understand.

Perhaps I am being punished for some earlier "atrocity" that I committed, but somehow, I can't think of anything.

I did kill a fly in our house a few months ago, but that is probably the only bad thing that I have done during the past few months.

I cannot figure it out.

And then, late in the day, to put a neat cherry on the top of the cake, I thwarted an attempt to be scammed over the phone late in the day, by people alleging to be from Chase Bank and Zelle.

I use neither, and pretty much gathered a little into the call that this was a phony.

So happily, they didn't get much from me ...

But with AI, who knows. 

A sound can be enough to get you.

I hope the only sound they got from me was when I disconnected them.

Now we come to today, and I have another major medical appointment to engage in and enjoy to the fullest.

I have to go to the special eye doctor so he can look at my partially torn retina.

I want to get this repaired next month, before my nephew's wedding and my daughter's own wedding.

So let's see--"see" being the operative word--if that can be accomplished.

When I have to go to this doctor, they have to dilate my pupils, and I am one of those people who kind of suffers when this happens, as it takes me literally an entire day for the dilation to wash itself out.

So that means I won't be able to see clearly for probably at least eight hours, or maybe even more.

My day is shot, but that is the way it is.

Like I said, I can't win.

I often feel like Rodney Dangerfield.

You remember him, the comedian whose entire schtick was ...

"I get no respect."

"When I was a kid, I was so ugly that my mother used to feed me with a slingshot."

"My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met."

"You know that you are ugly when you go to the proctologist and he sticks his finger in your mouth."

Well, I get no respect too.

But unlike Rodney Dangerfield, I can't make a career--or money--out of it.

No one would pay me for all the nonsense I have been through in recent times, and seemingly no amount of money would help me to get a "Get Out of Jail" card to escape this nonsense.

So what befuddles me today, beyond having to go to the eye doctor and arrange for a future surgery?

I don't know, but I am prepared for everything and anything.

Some days, I wish I had the power of Kreskin to see what was coming before it actually happened.

But I don't have that power ...

So when it comes, it comes--

And when it hits me, it is like Muhammad Ali hitting me squarely on the chin.

Knockout!

Ring the bell already!