Day 4 - LA County moves into yellow tier

This was an assignment for my French Cinema class. This actress is 63-years-old in real life.!!!

It was also glaucoma day…

5/6/21. Thursday

9:00-9:30 – I’m up and at 101 today. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that boiled egg after 9:00 p.m. Cramps are a tiny bit better so I go downstairs to say good morning to the dog. She’s asleep, so I rub her tummy to wake her up. She grabs her toy and we go outside. Finally she does her business and we return inside; coffee for me and rotten chicken for her.

9:30-1:00 – Blog posts

1:00-2:00 – I make a poached egg and read Devotion.

2:00-2:45 – Shower. Lotion. Covid-19 uniform.  The lightest make-up possible.

2:45–3:00 – I drive to my glaucoma appointment.

3:00-4:15 – I return to the Helm Eye Center after having been there last week.  There are a lot of patients in the waiting room today, but everyone is masked.  I don’t like being indoors with all of these people, but most of the patients are older and probably vaccinated…that is, if they’re not conservative, white, Republican men. Did I mention I live in a red district? It sucks.

I should note that this place is huge and staffed with 20/30 employees, so they add to the body count.  I sit in the lobby and wait to hear my name called while I read Devotion. I don’t wait long.

Coming here is a bit like being on an assembly line.  The Op-Tech takes me into a room and says she needs to check my vision, but I counter with the fact that I was just here 5 business days ago – why are we reinventing the wheel?  She says they have to check vision every time the patient comes in, no matter what.  Maybe it’s like a blood pressure check?  Medical Assistants take B/P at every visit, no matter what.

The Op-Tech asks me how my glaucoma is doing and I respond, “I don’t have glaucoma.”  This barely registers with her and she then asks me how my parents’ are holding up with their glaucoma. “They don’t have glaucoma.”  Next, she asks how the glaucoma eye drops I’m NOT taking are working for me. “I don’t have glaucoma.” This last response seems to finally register and she actually starts reading my EMR [electronic medical chart] so she can get a full update on my medical condition.

We move to another room for pictures of my eye, even though they were just taken 5 business days ago.  She assures me that these are different pictures and will help the doctor determine if I have glaucoma. I’m returned to a different waiting room.

More reading of Devotion.

Another Op-Tech arrives, greets me, and walks me to the doctor’s office, where she remains. This is highly unusual and in all my years attending eye appointments, I have never witnessed a chaperone for an ophthalmologist. Note: I run this doctor on the public website for the Medical Board of California; he’s clean. Dr. Engh puts numbing drops in my eye because he has to check the pressure…again.  I was just there, 5 business days ago, and the pressure was checked.  The numbing drops sting like hell. He dims the lights and looks at my eyes with his machine, calling out numbers to his chaperone.  This reminds me of a dental cleaning, when, in some circumstances, my dentist is checking gum recession and calls out numbers to the dental hygeniest, “3…2…4…3”

When he’s finished with the exam, Dr. Engh tells me that there is a newly formed hole in my optic nerve – it wasn’t there when they did the 2019 “superscan”, but it’s there now, indicating deterioration. Dr. Engh doesn’t think I have glaucoma, but he wants to prescribe glaucoma eye drops, for both eyes, NOW, because we can’t run the risk of the optic nerve in my left eye worsening. My right eye is fine.

I’m not buying any of it.  Why do I need glaucoma drops if I DON’T have glaucoma? Dr. Engh says I need the drops because I MIGHT have glaucoma, although he isn’t sure.  I should note that my “pressures” are absolutely fine.  Next question: Why do I need drops for BOTH eyes when the right eye is fine? Dr. Engh says if the left eye has glaucoma, the right eye will certainly follow.   Except, I don’t have glaucoma in my left eye right now. 

I ask him to check the 2018 pictures against today’s pictures as a point of comparison. Oh?  What’s this?  He didn’t know there were 2018 photos of my eye in the database?  I see now why the chaperone is here.  She points out that, yes, there are, in fact, photographs of my eye from 2018 in the database. When those are pulled up, the doctor notes that the “newly formed hole in my optic nerve” was actually there in 2018, but mysteriously disappeared in 2019.  That’s why he thought the hole was new, having just appeared over the course of last year, but the exact same hole in my optic nerve was there in 2018. In other words,  my eye hasn’t changed in 3 years. Huh!  How strange!! 

I ask the doctor to explain how a hole in one’s optic nerve can actually disappear [my 2019 scan]. What gives? You just said my eye will continue to deteriorate as the hole gets bigger and I need eye drops to stop the progression…and yet…the hole seemingly disappeared in 2019, only to reappear again now.  How is that possible?  He actually shrugged his shoulders!  Obviously, somebody read the 2019 photographs wrong and I think it was him. The public website shows that he received his Medical License in 1983, so that puts him at around 110 years old.  I pose the most basic of questions, “Maybe I was simply born this way? Maybe I’ve always had a slight hole in my optic nerve?”

After comparing three sets of scans, the doctor is non-committal and doesn’t specifically answer my question, but does say we can wait on the drops.  He needs to watch me carefully now and these special scans must be performed every six months as we embark on the wait-and-see period.  As always, my main question, which I keep to myself is, “How are they billing for this?” These special tests, that “must” be performed every 6 months, are probably costing my insurance company a fortune.  But this is common in the United States…there are so many tests that are contra-indicated and unnecessary if there is no family history…

Two such tests, off the top of my head, are the endoscopy and the colonoscopy. No, you do not need to get an annual colonoscopy from age 50 onward if you have no family history of colon cancer…and yet this myth/urban legend has persisted in our society for decades and many people, as soon as they turn 50, schedule this “rite of passage.”  It’s a complete fallacy.

People will want to come blows over this next heretical statement but an endoscopy is rarely needed; it’s a quick test that doctors like to perform in “endoscopy mills” so they can bill the insurance company thousands of dollars for a procedure that costs around $100 to perform.  This is because an endoscopy uses anesthesia, which increases the cost of the procedure exponentially, even though a standard endoscopy takes around 7 minutes. Again, it’s rarely needed to support a diagnosis.

My appointment is done and I leave, having wasted an hour of my life that I can’t get back.  The pièce de résistance?  As I’m leaving, the receptionist informs me that I wasn’t billed for my contact fitting and eye exam 5 days ago, even though I paid $180.  Apparently, the $180 was applied to the glasses I ordered [50% of the cost]. I now need to pay $202 on top of last week’s $180 expense. I just want to get out of here.

I go to Starbucks for a coffee, sit in the parking lot, and read my book.

5:00-5:45 – Home and I have some time before class so I start watching the film Elle, my next assignment for my French Cinema class. I take notes while I watch.

5:45-6:00 - I check the Discussion Board and course content. Everything is ready to go.

6:00-9:00 - Class begins. I administer the Final.

-I check email at College No. 1. Two of my Monday students are freaking out because their class was removed from Canvas. They demand to know what happened. Uh…the semester ended for the Monday night classes at midnight. It’s over. Your classes were removed from Canvas.

-I check email at College No. 2 - nothing of consequence.

-I take attendance.

-A few of the students post their goodbyes on the Discussion Board so I respond.

7:00-8:00 - I take the dog for a walk.

-Two students are still not taking the Final. I send an email to both asking them to report to the Final as soon as possible. They have 1 hour left.

8:00-9:00 - Continue watching Elle and taking notes.

9:00 - 9:30 - Class ends and a few of my students ask for confirmation of their grades. I respond to their emails.

9:30-11:00 - Continue taking notes and watching Elle. I rewind some of the scenes for clarity and now I’m finished. This is a movie about a violent, stranger rape. Here’s a summary:

The opening scene of Elle features the sounds of a brutal rape…dishes are breaking, a woman is screaming, a man is grunting.  When the viewer is finally allowed to observe what happened, we see a man in a black ski mask pull up his pants and run out the sliding glass door. The woman is on her back, clothes torn, and blood running down her thigh.  There are broken dishes everywhere. Slowly she stirs, shakily rises to her feet, then gradually sweeps up the fragments,  throws the dress she was wearing in the trashcan, and takes a bath. She never calls the police.

We later discover that the leading protagonist is Michèle Leblanc. Her 20-something son, Vincent, arrives a short time later for dinner and Michèle doesn’t bother to tell him she was just raped, saying only that she fell off her bike when he asks about her bruised eye. Michèle never calls the police, but later tells her ex-husband, Richard, her business partner, Anna, and her business partner’s husband, Robert, what happened as they dine at a restaurant. As the movie unfolds, Michèle starts getting sick texts from the rapist and begins collecting weapons, such as a small ax and pepper spray.

The film addresses Michèle’s quest to find the identity of her attacker, but in the meantime confusing subplots abound, muddying the waters.  For example:

Subplot No. 1 – Michèle sees a man sitting in a strange car outside her house.  She sneaks up to the driver’s side window, smashes it, and sprays the occupant with pepper spray. It turns out to be Richard, her ex-husband – he was watching Michèle’s house to protect her. Is Richard the rapist?

Subplot No. 2 – We learn that Michèle is having an affair with Robert, her business partner’s husband. Is Robert the rapist?

Subplot No. 3 – Michèle is the CEO of a video game company and Kurt, one of her male employees, hates her. Kurt is working on a rape sequence for the game he’s designing. Someone redesigns the rape sequence, puts Michèle’s head on the animated victim, and anonymously sends it to everyone in her company. Is Kurt the rapist?

Subplot No. 4 – Michèle tasks Kevin, her favorite gamer, with breaking into the home systems of all the male employees to try to find out who created the rape sequence featuring her as the victim. She later discovers that Kevin is the employee who created the rape sequence. Is Kevin the rapist?

Subplot No. 5 – Michèle meets her new neighbors, Rebecca and Patrick. Is Patrick the rapist?

There are many more subplots, but I won’t bore you with the details.

The second half of the film [it’s 2 hr/15 min] is marked by a Christmas party Michèle throws at her home.

Michèle invites her neighbors to the party, along with all the other suspects, and comes on to Patrick, rubbing his leg under the table. They also have a brief discussion about her father and her childhood in the living room. A few days later, Patrick comes over to help Michèle with her storm shutters during a windstorm – he embraces her, then leaves abruptly. A few days after this, Michèle is again attacked in her house by the same assailant in the ski mask.  This time she prevails, stabbing him in the hand with scissors, and removing his mask.  It’s Patrick!  Michèle screams at him to get out and he runs away.  Yet again, Michèle doesn’t call the police.

Shortly after this second attack, Michèle is in a car accident and, in a scene that completely defies reality, calls Patrick to pick her up.  He does and treats the wound on her leg. Later, Michèle and Vincent run into Patrick at the grocery store and he invites them over for dinner (Rebecca is out of town). While Vincent is asleep on the couch after drinking too much wine, Patrick leads Michèle to the basement and, yes, you guessed it, rapes her again! But did he? This latest encounter might actually be consensual, although it’s extremely violent.  Patrick punches and slaps Michèle across the face and she is left bleeding and in terrible pain. The audience is left wondering if this is what Michèle really wanted. By now, the movie has gone slightly off the rails.  Is the audience really supposed to believe the basement rape was “consensual”?  So far, the score is one actual rape; one attempted rape; and the most recent sexual encounter which is…questionable.  

To continue, a week later, Patrick ends up driving Michèle home from a party celebrating the opening of her new video game. During the ride home, Michèle tells Patrick that he’s sick, they’re “relationship” is sick, and she’s going to go to the police. Patrick drops Michèle off at her house and a few minutes later, the ski-masked intruder makes another appearance in her home. What a surprise. As Patrick proceeds to “rape” Michèle, Vincent arrives and beats Patrick to a pulp, killing him in the process, because the audience knows Michèle will never do it. It is Vincent who finally stops the madness and the movie is basically over. Patrick utters the word “Why?” as he is dying, seemingly confused over why he was pummeled to death when he was just role-playing. Except their sexual encounters don’t resemble role-playing; they just look like rape.

Wow.

11:00-12:00 - Kitchen duty. Take the dog out. Lock up.

12:00-12:30 - I read a Money Diary before I start my workout.

12:30-1:30 - I do an Insanity - Cardio Pylometric workout.

1:30-2:00 - Recover. I have a glass of champagne and work on a blog post.

2:00-3:00 - Night time routine. Bed.