humor – Page 93 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

University of Iowa Ophthalmology Always a Top Contender

Well, I suppose I should tell you why you’re seeing these oldie blog posts from a different era in my career. It’s because I didn’t know whether I’d even be able to see well enough to write after my retinal detachment surgery, which was this past Friday. So, I scheduled a few posts from the past just in case.

The University of Iowa Ophthalmology Department is always highly ranked in the country according to U.S. News & World Report. It was seventh in 2021-2022.

I found out 3 weeks ago that I’ve been walking around with a detached right retina for years probably. One of the biggest risks for developing the condition is being over 50 years old. Hey, do you want to look like me by the time your fifty—ish?

You know, what Sena and I think of whenever we hear about retinal detachment is Sugar Ray Leonard and his retinal tear in 1982 when he was at the top of his career. He almost didn’t have the surgery right away until a doctor told him might go blind if he chose to put it off. I think we pretty much stopped watching boxing because of how dangerous it is.

Don’t slap me on the head, I just had retinal detachment surgery!

Leonard’s description of his retinal detachment is classic: “The only thing I felt, I’d get hit in the eye and it swells, then all of a sudden it felt like a shade. It felt like a little shade opens in your eye — you don’t completely see the full picture. It looked like my eye was swollen, well… it felt like my eye was swollen because my vision at that time was getting worse because that curtain was coming down….

“I didn’t even know what (the doctor) was talking about. He said, ‘You have a detached retina.’ I said, ‘OK’. We thought we could come after the fight. Seriously,” said Leonard, who was told by the world renown surgeon Ronald G. Michels that holding off this surgery for another week could lead to blindness.”

He had the surgery right away.

I had a crack team of surgeons and the nursing and other staff were the best. I’m not going to bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the procedure. It did involve sharp objects. I got by with minimal sedation and pain control was good. They did a procedure called a scleral buckle (which is made of silicone) in which they tie this belt around the eye, cinch it tight until it pops like a grape, and then charge you $10 million. I think it’s covered by insurance, but check with your carrier just to make sure.

One thing that does tend to happen when I get sedation is an uptick in my baseline absent-mindedness. Shortly after we got home after the procedure, I couldn’t find my house keys or my car keys (don’t worry, I wasn’t driving). I even called the hospital to check if I’d left them there. Later, I happened to open the cupboard where I usually place them—and there they were. I had put them away and immediately forgot that I did it.

I’m now counting on Sena to give me the mandatory eye drops, 17 drops per hour from 6 nine-quart bottles until death. Don’t bother to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom in any regular way—you’ll be too busy administering eye drops. Are we clear on that?

The swelling is already going down. I can carry around my eye in a bushel basket now instead of a wagon. Sena can barely look at it without cringing. But if I were to try to give myself the drops, they’d be dribbling down my shirt.

If you don’t get your eyes examined after you see what looks like a curtain coming down over your eye or see flashes of light—you should get your head examined. Psychiatrists will likely charge you only $10 million.

Picture credit Wikimedia: Not copyrighted material.

Cribbage 29 Board Rematch!

Today Sena and I held the Cribbage 29 board rematch and it was unparalleled in the history of the universe! We shot a video of it and posted it on YouTube. It’s about 28 minutes long and we had a blast playing the game.

The last time we played on the 29 board was a couple of years ago. We posted it to YouTube and it has over 700 views so far—and it’s still getting views. I won the first game. You’ll have to watch the video to find out who won today.

The odds of getting a 29-score hand in cribbage is 1 in 216,580. Needless to say, neither of us got one. It’s pretty much a once in a lifetime thing. When it happens, it usually gets reported to local newspapers.

Pegging Around Wisconsin

We played a game on our new Wisconsin cribbage board. We made some miscounts I’m sure, but it was because we had so much fun talking. We lived in Madison for a short time many years ago and managed to see quite a few sights in the south-central region of the state. And even after we moved back to Iowa, we made return trips to visit Wisconsin because there’s a lot to do there.

Madison itself is the capital of Wisconsin. One of my first impressions is that a number of fascinating people live there. I remember we were walking west on State Street, and I saw a guy walking in the middle of the street wearing a live rattlesnake coiled on his head. Sena missed that for some reason. He was moving carefully and slowly, probably to avoid rattling his headgear.

I don’t think the sculpture of Harry Dumpty is still standing in Madison, but for several years it was a distinctive bronze sculpture in front of the Madison Municipal Building just south of the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Doty Street. I can’t see it on Google Maps nowadays.

I never knew the sculpture was Harry Dumpty. It sat above a large concrete wall with an inscription on it which I just assumed was connected to the sculpture and probably still sits there although we couldn’t find it in 2012 when we returned for a visit:

“David James Schaefer, 1955-2004
was a phenomenal phenomenon. Though plagued by the progressive debilities of cerebral palsy, “Schaefer” was an uncomplaining and generous friend to many. Disability Rights Specialist for the City of Madison in three different settings, his death of a heart attack in September 2004 made a hole in our community which cannot ever be filled.
Erected by the Friends of Schaefer at private expense.”

It turns out Harry Dumpty has no connection to David James Schaefer. In fact, Harry is one of several similar sculptures created by artist Brent George, who made him in 1997, saying he’s Humpty’s brother. If you look closely at the book sitting open next to Harry, it’s entitled “Harry Dumpty.” Brent George’s name is below it. Brent’s phone number is on the front of the wall. Evidently somebody called him and asked about the sculpture. Brent says there’s no connection between the sculpture and the inscription.

On the subject of art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (on State Street) is a place to see. Although the art works are free to view on the web, they’re copyrighted and you can’t reproduce them without permission of the artists. However, at the time we were there in 2012 we saw Typewriter Eraser by Claes Oldenburg. I think it’s OK to share our picture of the giant one we saw in Washington, D.C. In 2015.

One of the more relaxing times we had was having pizza for lunch at Paisan’s in Madison. We were outside and had that breathtaking view of Lake Monona, the breeze was coming off the water, cooling and refreshing—like the Moose Drool brown ale, which is not a Wisconsin brew; it’s made in Montana.

Wisconsin is known for its beer, among many other virtues. New Glarus Brewing Company is famous. I tried a few of the brews. One of them was Stone Soup. It had oil of clove in it and my lips got numb.

We took a dinner train ride at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom. It was great food and great company.

One of the more interesting stories about Monroe, Wisconsin is The Great Limburger Cheese War, which I mangled during the heat of the game. I first heard about it on a TV show; it seemed to me it was on Mysteries at the Museum, but when I googled it, I couldn’t find it.

We had a great time in Wisconsin. Maybe someday we’ll go back for a visit.

Wisconsin Memories

We’re just reminiscing on our time in Wisconsin years ago. We’re hoping this will be a prologue to making a video soon of us playing cribbage on our new Wisconsin board. Until then, you can check out the mini travelogue, including hanging out with the Fonz in Milwaukee. The big mansion in the video is Black Point Estate and Gardens in Lake Geneva.

It was during a July 2012 visit to Madison that I found, at Browzers Bookstore, an old medical book my class used in my first year, Robbins’ Pathologic Basis of Disease. My class used the nearly 7-pound red 3rd edition containing 1,467 pages.

Also on that trip, we rented a couple of bicycles from Machinery Row Bicycles. We can’t imagine paying $7,500 for a bicycle, much less what looked like $25,000 for a double tandem.

We rode all the way out to Olbrich Botanical Gardens on a sweltering summer day. The Thai Pavilion shown in the video was a gift to the University of Wisconsin from the Thai government.

We never ran into a Bigfoot in Wisconsin, but there have reportedly been over 70 squatch sightings in the heavily wooded areas. Don’t tell the Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (AIMS). Wild Bill would just cuss a blue streak and shout, “Hell, that ain’t no Appalachia!”

Mountain Monsters Mooners Mothballed

I just noticed that the Travel Channel may have cancelled the Bigfoot hunter parody Mountain Monsters show. There were 268 comments complaining about it and I don’t think any of them realized that the show is a parody.

The first time we saw it about a month ago we laughed ourselves silly. The second time I saw it, which was the following week, the whole gang of them mooned the camera. Maybe that’s why they got cancelled. Or maybe they knew they were going to be cancelled and mooned the camera as a parting shot.

I’m not sure why anyone tries to produce a serious show about Bigfoot and cryptid chasers. You never see anything. The camera pans and the flashlights stab the dark forest, bigfoot hunters whistle, howl, knock on trees, and—the woods are empty.

The only Bigfoot I’ve ever seen in these shows is a GI Joe style doll strapped to a guy’s backpack.

The serious Bigfoot hunters all talk in loud stage whispers, say swear words so they can get bleeped, which supposedly is more realistic, yet never find so much as a turd proving that the beast moves its bowels occasionally.

That’s why Mountain Monsters was so funny. You knew they were lampooning the whole idea and looked like they were having a great time doing it. Whoever saw a Smoke Wolf outside of a cartoon panel?

We fell over laughing at Wild Bill imitating a Bigfoot having diarrhea in the woods. Where could you find a gun like his but in the Walmart toy section?

Americans need to laugh more. That’s why the Travel Channel should sign those guys up for another season.

But please—no more mooning.

Update: I think you can view episodes on Dailymotion at this link.

Featured image picture credit: pixydotorg.

Wisconsin Cribbage Board Arrives

We got the Wisconsin state map cribbage board yesterday and there’s a little story behind it, right off the bat. It was delivered by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and I remember the slap as it hit our porch from the USPS worker just tossing the package.

When we opened the package, it turned out to be not the board we ordered. It was not as thick as the Iowa cribbage board and it didn’t have a storage space on the back for pegs. The packing material for the Wisconsin board was not as interesting as that used for the Iowa board, which was packed using a local newspaper with a sermon on one of the pages, “In times like these we turn with trust to God.”

In contrast, the Wisconsin board was shipped from the same place in Minnesota, but this time in a plain white USPS envelope, conventionally secured with eBay tape, bubble wrap, and a plain brown shopping bag. No sermons.

Sena arranged to return it for a refund (which was the only choice other than having the exact same item reshipped from the seller), carefully rewrapped it and drove out to a couple of the UPS stores—both of which happened to be closed yesterday. She was late by just a couple of minutes.

This morning we noticed that the seller sent an email apologizing about shipping us the wrong board and offered us the choice of shipping it back for the full refund or keeping it at 70% off the price. We took the latter.

We’re now brushing up on our memories of Wisconsin, chuckling at our snapshots, and considering using the deck of cards we got at Lost Canyon gift shop at Wisconsin Dells, where we took the horse-drawn wagon tour 13 years ago.

Lost Canyon wagon tour in Wisconsin Dells

Scrabble Babble

The other day Sena and I played a close game of scrabble—close that is until I challenged her play of the word “Xi.” I lost a turn because in our brand spanking new Scrabble dictionary it’s defined as a Greek letter.

Later, I knew better than to challenge her play of “Ka,” which I looked up after the game. It means the spiritual self of a human being in Egyptian religion. I ended up losing the game.

She plays a Scrabble video game and got a Bingo recently, which got her 80 points. On the web a Bingo is defined as playing all seven tiles, and you get 50 points. I guess that’s the difference between playing the video Scrabble game and playing a human being, whether of the Egyptian religion or not.

We also used a brand-new Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, during a different game. We used that and I challenged her play of “dic.” I guess you know what’s coming.

As you can probably guess, “dic” is not a word, but those of us with dirty minds know full well that “dick” is a slang term that can mean penis, detective, or surprisingly, nothing. The nothing definition reminded me of the Men in Black scene in which the soon-to-be Agent J is riding down the elevator with Agent K, explaining that because he was chosen by the MIB organization, that means they recognize all of his skills. Agent K makes the deflating remark that all of his skills mean “precisely dick.”

I know you’ll be fascinated to learn that the nothing meaning of dick is not in the Scrabble dictionary nor is it in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

So, remember that the next time you play Scrabble. On the other hand, if you don’t play Scrabble, this means precisely—detective.

Musing on Coincidences

We’re waiting for another state road map cribbage board, this one is Wisconsin. If you’ve seen the cribbage game video we made, “Pegging Around Iowa,” you get the idea.

We’ve been to Wisconsin, briefly. It’s a complicated story. It was roughly 13 years ago. We moved to Madison so I could make another stab at private practice psychiatry.

During the lunch break between interviews, I read The Onion for the first time. It was set up as a college newspaper in which none of the stories were factually accurate—and wildly satirical. I thought it was really funny. It started back in 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s now based in Chicago. They published a large paperback book entitled The Onion Book of Known Knowledge: A Definitive Encyclopaedia of Existing Information.

I’m pretty sure none of the information was true. I owned a copy, but the print was so small, I couldn’t read it without a magnifying glass. It either got lost in one of our moves or I got rid of it.

Scott Dikkers was one of the originators. Coincidentally, in 1993 he was interviewed by a columnist for The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa college newspaper. Scott also wrote a cartoon called Jim’s Journal. This is another coincidence because I kept a sort of diary in between blogs for a while a few years ago. I called it Jim’s Journal. Back in 1993 I wasn’t paying attention then to The Onion or much of anything else except surviving my first year of residency in psychiatry at Iowa.

The Onion was one of my favorite reminders of Madison. We loved living there, but unfortunately, I disliked private practice. We moved back to Iowa, but not before doing a lot of fun things in Madison and places nearby.

Another coincidence that is admittedly minor is that, several years ago I accidentally walked into an auditorium ready to present my Grand Rounds lecture to a crowd. The only hitch was that it was the wrong crowd. I had arrived early and the previous group was still in the auditorium. That was embarrassing. When it was time for my performance, I sort of ad libbed a series of jokes about my blunder. This got me an award from the residents—Improvisor of the Year.

I think I also blogged about the experience and used a feature image of myself with the caption, “And now for the juggling of produce,” a reminder of my clownish performance at the Grand Rounds. If you look closely, you can see one of the produce items is—you guessed it, an onion.

Years later, I happened to find a video of older people being interviewed on their 100^th birthday. They were in Madison. I left a comment saying I thought it was a gas. I still do. Coincidentally, I worked at St. Mary’s Hospital, albeit briefly. I left that comment in 2012, about 3 years after I returned to Iowa.

And, coincidentally I found another video that sends pretty much the same message, pertinent to our times. It was taken for a January 2021 news story about a lady named Mary Gerber who was celebrating her 100^th birthday who had volunteered for 33 years at St. Mary’s Hospital and got her first Covid-19 vaccine.

These coincidences happen only occasionally, but continue to reverberate in our lives, even to this day. I think of the 2002 alien invasion film, Signs. In it, the lead character is Graham Hess, a local pastor who has given up being a minister because he’s lost his faith related to his wife dying in a car accident. He and his brother Merrill are discussing the many lights in the sky (UFOs) that have been seen recently. I think of what he says,

People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, as evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I’m sure the people in group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation is a fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own. And that fills them fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there’s a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they’re looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

Merrill answers “I’m a miracle man.”

I’m not sure yet what group I fall into. Things happen sometimes that make me hope there are miracles.

We Hung a Wall Clock and Survived

Today Sena and I hung a wall clock. It was not just any wall clock. We got tired of hearing the darn ticking noise on our old clock. Sena got a non-ticking silent wall clock made by a company called Plumeet.

I could not find a video that showed exactly how you use the provided no trace nail hanger hook for hanging the clock on the wall. There were plenty of short videos on how great the clock looks and how quiet it is—but it was never running and no one ever showed you how you install it on a real wall in real life. So we made one.

It’s harder than it looks to fix the no trace nail hanger hook to the wall. The nails are tiny and tend to pop out of the hanger as you hammer them. They are hard to find in the carpet fibers. There are no discernible nail heads. The obvious advantage of that is to make it so much easier to mash your fingers instead—which is more entertaining.

The instructions don’t make it much easier because they’re comical. Be sure to read the first sentences in the Note and in the Tips sections.

Notes: “When the clock walks incorrectly or stops walking, please replace the battery.”

Tips: “When you are not in use, please uninstall the batteries and lay up the item in a dry place.”

Whenever you see a clock walk incorrectly, you should immediately stop smoking or drinking whatever chemical you got. If they are not illegal and you have not consumed too much, then schedule an emergency eye clinic appointment where you can get your eyes dilated with mydriatic drops, rendering you completely incapable of seeing anything with any clarity whatsoever. That will at least give you something else to worry about.

And when you are not in use, you should either take a nap or reconcile yourself to being retired. Counseling is available and you should energetically avoid it, as usual.

The Plumeet is a silent clock. It makes no ticking sound whatsoever. And it’s about as difficult to hang on the no trace nail hook as it would be to hang on any other hook.

That’s because there’s no difference in the way you actually hang it from the hole in the back of the clock. Whether you use the no trace nail hanger hook or a Highway Thru Hell snatch block, you’ll still have to go by feel and peek a few times around the side of the clock to figure out how to actually hang it. Luck plays a significant role.

Read the instructions for fun. They are also written in German, which may or may not be helpful or amusing.

Knock Down Furniture Will Knock You Down

There are many names for ready-to-assemble furniture, including flat pack furniture, or knock down furniture. We’ve never bought IKEA furniture, but it’s the same kind of thing and there are a ton of memes about it.

I kind of like the name “knock down furniture” because it best explains how we feel sometimes after we’ve tackled a tough project—like the chair we got recently. It looked like a simple chair, but it came with a tiny Allen wrench and there were way too many bolts, two different kinds of washers, those fussy little barrel nuts that drive you nuts, dowels, screws and you needed extra tools besides the Allen wrench (well, just a Phillips head and a flat head screwdriver). I guess I got spoiled after getting a mini-rachet driver Allen wrench in addition to the manual one which came with the platform bed kit we recently got.

The dreaded Allen wrench and other offenders

It took us all day to figure out how to get the seat back to fit between the legs so the bolt holes would line up. We came really close to deciding we’d have to return it. I installed the apron (the part which fits between the two legs in front and requires dowels for which you need a mallet) upside down. I’m not blaming it completely on the instructions—OK, I am blaming it completely on the instructions. Sometimes a thousand words would be better than a lousy picture.

By the way, I think Allen Wrench Arthritis (AWA) is a thing.

Contrast that with the love seat which was much larger, did not require any tools at all and barely took 30 minutes to assemble. We didn’t break a sweat. The only reason I look forlorn in the picture of me holding up the seat back is because I’m still suffering from PTSD after the little chair assembly.

I think the best knock down furniture piece would require no tools, have only 4 or five pieces to sort of snap together and take no more than 20 minutes to assemble.