Idiopathy

For the last eighteen months or so I’ve been seeing an eye doc about a retina problem that may or may not have anything to do with anything else. (These visits are sort of a “fountain of youth” experience for me, as I’m probably the clinic’s only non-Medicare patient, and the only guys my age I see there are wheeling their very elderly parents in for cataract surgery or the like.) I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be something in the Hippocratic Oath that prevents a doc from saying he’s clueless about the cause of a problem-- instead, he tells me it’s “idiopathic”, which is doctor-speak for “I don’t know why this is happening”. Look it up.

But, you know, given what could be causing the problem but most likely isn’t, perhaps I should chalk this up as one more thing to be thankful for?

Which reminds me of a song, Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqFUmo8VVg0&feature=related


Doctor, my eyes have seen eight years
And a slow parade of fears without dying
Now I want to understand

You have done all that you could
To swap the evil for the good without lying
You must tell me if you can

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise for getting toxic for so long

'Cause I have wandered through C’s world
And as each moment has unfurled
I've been waiting to awaken from these dreams
Cancer goes just where it will
I never realized that until I got to reading
That it's sneakier than it seems

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
Just tell no lies
Just say if meds weren't great for me

Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see balls fly
Is this the PRICE for having learned how not to slice