Jim Croce once wrote a song that I really liked. In the song, he named certain things that one just does NOT do. They were:
- Don’t spit into the wind
- Don’t sword fight with Zorro
- Don’t pull the mask off of the Old Lone Ranger
- And, DON’T mess around with Slim- – – evidently Slim was one bad dude!
After my experience on Monday, I would add one more: “Do NOT get in a knife fight with your ophthalmologist.” I am reasonably certain that I have had a huge crater cut in my eye, and have had a two inch PVC pipe implanted in the crater to lessen the pressures in that eye. My eye was doing great after glaucoma surgery a year or two ago. However, I had a thick membrane over the left eye that I had a specialist peel. The surgery was a success, but my eye had a severe allergic reaction to one of the post op eye drops, which caused a huge ulcer to form over the cornea. This, in turn, sent the pressures back up in that injured eye. Since I have atypical glaucoma, which means that my eyes require subnormal pressures, we had to alleviate the high pressures in that eye. That was accomplished in outpatient surgery. I’m avoiding my grandchildren for a few days because I can’t lift anything for a week, and I don’t want them to think that their Papa has turned into a demon with this red eye.
Now, I am entering an age where many of my friends are having knee, hip, and shoulder replacements, and I know my procedure was minor compared to theirs. But, this is MY EYE we are talking about. I will never forget telling Greg Hays’ Dad who was about to undergo open heart surgery that open heart surgery was fairly routine these days. Mr. Donald always called me “Buck” for some reason. He was a big man and a decorated WW II hero. He fixed me with a steely gaze and said, “Buck, this is MY heart we are talking about. And, there ain’t a damn thing routine about it.” I had enough sense to lower my eyes, mumble “yes sir”, and move on to the subject of the weather.
Speaking of weather, we finally got the beneficial rains that our woods and food plots desperately needed yesterday. It has been wet and cool for so long here, and then the switch flipped off, and we turned abnormally hot and dry. This rain was just the ticket for hatching young birds and good ground cover. We can make it rain on our crops with our center pivot irrigation systems, but rain in the woods is in the Lord’s hands. I hope everyone is having a great late spring. I am about to run out to our sweet corn operation as my partner is picking his first sweet corn today. Brother Glenn and I always like to make certain that Joe’s harvesting begins at least a week ahead of ours since it his job to have the Precooler staffed and running. It just works better for the gun to be to his head to have everything ready since the first corn is his, and he has never failed to “getter done”.
Have a blessed day y’all!