You Would Think...
...that by the 21st century, certain problems such as cancer, pollution, and other diseases would have been wiped out. In particular, glaucoma.
Kanna has open-angle, chronic glaucoma; in fact, she's had it for the better part of her life. We first learned about when she was about 21, after I joined the Air Force and she began experiencing vision problems. By the time we detected it, she had almost completely lost vision in her right eye. Today, that eye is completely blind (actually, she can detect light from a single point near the lowest quadrant, but her vision in the right eye is effectively gone).
For the uninformed, glaucoma is a disease of the eye which causes pressure to build within the eyeball. This pressure damages the optic nerve, which leads to loss of vision. She does take medication for her condition, but does not smoke cannabis (and has no desire to do so). She had also undergone surgery to install a "plug" in her eyeball which allows the doctor to control the pressure somewhat by opening or closing it and allowing fluid to drain or build.
Unfortunately, it is an inevitability that she will eventually go blind. About two weeks ago, she had an odd feeling and was concerned, so she went to the local ophthalmologist, who told her that nothing was wrong and it was just a small pressure build, but when she called her regular doctor, he told her to come in ASAP. It was he we visited today. The local doctor is not a specialist, so it isn't her fault that she didn't detect the problem, but her regular doctor recommended a new doctor for us.
It seems that she has lost a fairly sizable amount of vision in her good eye. While this news is not devastating (she can still see well enough to function), it just serves to further drive home the fact that she will lose her sight. This upsets me for obvious reasons, but for her, it is devastating. She relies so much on her vision, and to lose it would be not only very difficult for her, but also emotionally shattering.
You would think by now that we would have come up with a solution to problems like this and that it would have been affordable. In a perfect world, everyone would have the medical care that they need, without having to worry about who is footing the bill. But of course, humankind is driven by greed.
Kanna has open-angle, chronic glaucoma; in fact, she's had it for the better part of her life. We first learned about when she was about 21, after I joined the Air Force and she began experiencing vision problems. By the time we detected it, she had almost completely lost vision in her right eye. Today, that eye is completely blind (actually, she can detect light from a single point near the lowest quadrant, but her vision in the right eye is effectively gone).
For the uninformed, glaucoma is a disease of the eye which causes pressure to build within the eyeball. This pressure damages the optic nerve, which leads to loss of vision. She does take medication for her condition, but does not smoke cannabis (and has no desire to do so). She had also undergone surgery to install a "plug" in her eyeball which allows the doctor to control the pressure somewhat by opening or closing it and allowing fluid to drain or build.
Unfortunately, it is an inevitability that she will eventually go blind. About two weeks ago, she had an odd feeling and was concerned, so she went to the local ophthalmologist, who told her that nothing was wrong and it was just a small pressure build, but when she called her regular doctor, he told her to come in ASAP. It was he we visited today. The local doctor is not a specialist, so it isn't her fault that she didn't detect the problem, but her regular doctor recommended a new doctor for us.
It seems that she has lost a fairly sizable amount of vision in her good eye. While this news is not devastating (she can still see well enough to function), it just serves to further drive home the fact that she will lose her sight. This upsets me for obvious reasons, but for her, it is devastating. She relies so much on her vision, and to lose it would be not only very difficult for her, but also emotionally shattering.
You would think by now that we would have come up with a solution to problems like this and that it would have been affordable. In a perfect world, everyone would have the medical care that they need, without having to worry about who is footing the bill. But of course, humankind is driven by greed.