Ah hah. I just did the Amsler Grid test for the first time in too long. I know I was avoiding it.
The Amsler Grid test helps screen for symptoms of macular degeneration and, in my case, any worsening of the condition.
It has been too long between tests for me to say what it might mean, but it looks a little bit worse. Not a lot worse. A few more splotches of a different consistency than I remember from before, though some of the bigger splotches appear gone or less pronounced.
My one-year-after appointment, in which we may determine if I need the surgical procedure, is scheduled for next month. I might schedule the appointment sooner.
I do not worry about it much. Blindness (which would take a long time to arrive via this condition) might actually suit me. Going deaf, on the other hand, would make me instantly go ape shit. I could not live without sound.
I seldom talk about it with friends. I have found it impossible to clearly distinguish between macular degeneration and other more common eye problems. No, I can explain the difference clearly, but as with most places in my life I simply do not talk loud or fast enough to fully express a concept before getting interrupted and talked over.
Macular degeneration is rare but hardly unique among people my age. As a regular listener to the Paul Harvey radio program (and as someone who does not fit the demographic for that program) it is perhaps ironic that I would be tagged with this problem. Paul Harvey regularly promotes products that claim to slow or halt the progress of MD. His promotion of these products is clearly targeted toward the elderly. The Amsler Grid which I keep on my shelf is a sheet of paper commonly carried around by folks in their 80s, an age range I hope never to reach.
Some of my earliest memories of the house I grew up in include Paul Harvey. My father, driving me somewhere, would change the radio from whatever station it was on to catch Paul Harvey’s mid-day spot.
Then as now, Harvey would introduce absurd stories about bungled robberies and Chinese women growing horns on their heads with the same steely, holier-than-thou voice he uses when talking of illegal immigrants wanting the same rights as “Us. U.S.”
Us. U.S.
For as many times as I’ve heard Paul Harvey say those words with the deliberate cadence he applies uniquely to that phrase, I have to say that it looks strange as written text.
Us. U.S.
The phrase does not look like it sounds. It would look spitty and indignant if it looked like the way Paul Harvey says it. The esses are curvy and wobbly, not demonstratively righteous and unassailable.
Paul Harvey tells some tall tales. He recycles or re-purposes urban legends at times, particularly in his closing “For what it’s worth” coda.
I do not mind this. I detect the character of a Santa Claus or a story-telling grandma who everyone knows spins yarns to make the grandkids happy. But even the youngsters know these lies when they hear them.
