The Lament
Harvest Moon Country Friday, July 12, 2002
The eyes are the window to the soul or so I have been told. And yet who among us has not seen the individual at his most impressive walking with stick or guide dog. A person who believes that they are living life to the fullest and have conquered their fears and knows the joy of that accomplishment.
Eighteen years post radial keratotomy operation with its glare night and day. A moon that has eight other quarter moons that are displayed to the top left and present themselves in a downward arc, propagating in diminishing appearance until we’re back to the moon at the bottom center right.
Does that make any sense to anyone else who doesn’t look through eight radial keratotomy cuts?
You never know what it’s like until it happens to you. It happened to me one eye at a time.
Dr Morlege insisted that I try it first? Try looking through glasses with one eye healing from refractive surgery and the other hanging on to the old vision. The experience was some sort of half in half out the door visual experience that made it difficult to take a step off the side walk to the street.
You can’t undo the cuts.
I had to make it work I had a new career as a locomotive engineer; it was an exciting time.
I had my own 12,000 ton coal train 115 cars, five locomotives, 15000 hp and 178 miles of mostly new track that ran through the harvest moon country of eastern Wyoming, a High Plains desert now, it was an ancient seabed and now a topography shaped by the last ice age. The loaded coal trains, leaving the mines of Campbell County rolled through the undulating territory south towards Douglas Wyoming. Crawling along at 10 or 12 mph as we would climb the washes and then a 45mph sprint downhill until the next hill.
Just a few miles outside of Douglas we descend a winding track of welded continuous rail into the Platte river valley, by Bridger junction and the old Chicago Northwest connection, where the Platte River spreads out to make the Glendo reservoir, then descending one more time until the track is at river grade through Wendover Canyon crossing over the North Platte River into Guernsey Wy at the end of the Gillette to Guernsey run.
After the R. K. surgery I could not be outside without sunglasses; cloudy day, sunny day, winter’s day or summer. The starburst and halos-night time glare either sprang from or surrounded all the lights in my night time environment and became a challenge I had to overcome. It was like a dirty pair of soft contact lenses had been permanently attached to my eye balls.
The worst that it got was on a double mainline with a long siding to one side or the other with three trains moving at three different speeds, in two different directions. During the day this is not a problem but at night the conflicting visual references induced vertigo or more commonly known in the aviation industry as spatial disorientation and could come on suddenly with all the panic and fear that vertigo can induce.
Exciting times, one return trip pulling empties up the hill out of the Platte River Valley just before the railroad crosses over Highway 59, I was looking at my rearview mirror and coming up out of the valley behind me on a training run was a B-52. Very surreal to see a B-52 in your rearview mirror, intercepting the locomotives and waving his wings the pilot throttled up to full power and those eight Pratt & Whitney's belched eight black exhaust trails. Exciting times.
I was a pilot myself and during instrument training, what they call under the hood training, I had learned to shake off vertigo, to trust my instruments and their readings and conquer the fear and the feeling of loss of control. The lessons served me well in the nighttime running of a train with few outside visual references or when those that I did have were lost in star patterns and halo and glare from inside and outside light sources.
The railroads worked us 60 and 70 hours a week and fatigue, burnout, employee turnover and train crashes were acceptable losses to the management. Unless the crashes made it to the press then everyone would take notice. Then you have the press asking politicians pointed questions and for awhile you could lay off for day or two with out being threatened with disciplinary action.
Then you have this informed consent paperwork that hangs over the experience to intimidate you and threaten to bring on the wrath of their lawyers if you even think of complaining. Ignorance is bliss to the corporate world that hides behind legalisms in their superior position in the modern world, insulated protected until finally the statute of limitations absolves them of any a liability.
Dissatisfied customer to say the least. Many of us should not have been picked as candidates for refractive surgery, especially RK.
When I first heard of lasik my first thought was that I wished I had waited. That was 10 years ago now that I have found SE, I find that some people are still wishing that they had waited for a new and better procedure.
So where am I going with this? The change in US Army policy will bring an inevitable increase in RS numbers mostly young people and I hope mostly happy with the results of their eye surgery. Those of us who have to live with an unsatisfactory result from Refractive Surgery could become lost in the statistics. Surrounded by the commercial hype, Government policy changes that could move millions into the RS market and a feeling that, I will be lost as the statistically insignificant.
If the Railroad Retirement Board grants my occupational disability as I hope, then I guess I will go find something else to do with the rest of my life. If they (RRB) don’t - I will still find something else to do and thinking all the while that this life is sure going fast.
I sit before my only candle
Like a pilgrim sets beside the way
Now this journey appears before my candle
As a song that’s growing fainter the harder that I play
But I fear before I end I’ll fade away
But I guess I’ll get there though I wouldn’t say for sure --------- Jackson Browne
Miles Mulloy
That was ten years ago, Railroad retirement is a good thing , convert your auto to CNG , it is still exciting times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwHRKUHPLNU corprate video of the first train over the coal line
http://visionsurgeryrehab.evecommunity.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/3686055494
some people who have had bad out comes after refractive surgery
The eyes are the window to the soul or so I have been told. And yet who among us has not seen the individual at his most impressive walking with stick or guide dog. A person who believes that they are living life to the fullest and have conquered their fears and knows the joy of that accomplishment.
Eighteen years post radial keratotomy operation with its glare night and day. A moon that has eight other quarter moons that are displayed to the top left and present themselves in a downward arc, propagating in diminishing appearance until we’re back to the moon at the bottom center right.
Does that make any sense to anyone else who doesn’t look through eight radial keratotomy cuts?
You never know what it’s like until it happens to you. It happened to me one eye at a time.
Dr Morlege insisted that I try it first? Try looking through glasses with one eye healing from refractive surgery and the other hanging on to the old vision. The experience was some sort of half in half out the door visual experience that made it difficult to take a step off the side walk to the street.
You can’t undo the cuts.
I had to make it work I had a new career as a locomotive engineer; it was an exciting time.
I had my own 12,000 ton coal train 115 cars, five locomotives, 15000 hp and 178 miles of mostly new track that ran through the harvest moon country of eastern Wyoming, a High Plains desert now, it was an ancient seabed and now a topography shaped by the last ice age. The loaded coal trains, leaving the mines of Campbell County rolled through the undulating territory south towards Douglas Wyoming. Crawling along at 10 or 12 mph as we would climb the washes and then a 45mph sprint downhill until the next hill.
Just a few miles outside of Douglas we descend a winding track of welded continuous rail into the Platte river valley, by Bridger junction and the old Chicago Northwest connection, where the Platte River spreads out to make the Glendo reservoir, then descending one more time until the track is at river grade through Wendover Canyon crossing over the North Platte River into Guernsey Wy at the end of the Gillette to Guernsey run.
After the R. K. surgery I could not be outside without sunglasses; cloudy day, sunny day, winter’s day or summer. The starburst and halos-night time glare either sprang from or surrounded all the lights in my night time environment and became a challenge I had to overcome. It was like a dirty pair of soft contact lenses had been permanently attached to my eye balls.
The worst that it got was on a double mainline with a long siding to one side or the other with three trains moving at three different speeds, in two different directions. During the day this is not a problem but at night the conflicting visual references induced vertigo or more commonly known in the aviation industry as spatial disorientation and could come on suddenly with all the panic and fear that vertigo can induce.
Exciting times, one return trip pulling empties up the hill out of the Platte River Valley just before the railroad crosses over Highway 59, I was looking at my rearview mirror and coming up out of the valley behind me on a training run was a B-52. Very surreal to see a B-52 in your rearview mirror, intercepting the locomotives and waving his wings the pilot throttled up to full power and those eight Pratt & Whitney's belched eight black exhaust trails. Exciting times.
I was a pilot myself and during instrument training, what they call under the hood training, I had learned to shake off vertigo, to trust my instruments and their readings and conquer the fear and the feeling of loss of control. The lessons served me well in the nighttime running of a train with few outside visual references or when those that I did have were lost in star patterns and halo and glare from inside and outside light sources.
The railroads worked us 60 and 70 hours a week and fatigue, burnout, employee turnover and train crashes were acceptable losses to the management. Unless the crashes made it to the press then everyone would take notice. Then you have the press asking politicians pointed questions and for awhile you could lay off for day or two with out being threatened with disciplinary action.
Then you have this informed consent paperwork that hangs over the experience to intimidate you and threaten to bring on the wrath of their lawyers if you even think of complaining. Ignorance is bliss to the corporate world that hides behind legalisms in their superior position in the modern world, insulated protected until finally the statute of limitations absolves them of any a liability.
Dissatisfied customer to say the least. Many of us should not have been picked as candidates for refractive surgery, especially RK.
When I first heard of lasik my first thought was that I wished I had waited. That was 10 years ago now that I have found SE, I find that some people are still wishing that they had waited for a new and better procedure.
So where am I going with this? The change in US Army policy will bring an inevitable increase in RS numbers mostly young people and I hope mostly happy with the results of their eye surgery. Those of us who have to live with an unsatisfactory result from Refractive Surgery could become lost in the statistics. Surrounded by the commercial hype, Government policy changes that could move millions into the RS market and a feeling that, I will be lost as the statistically insignificant.
If the Railroad Retirement Board grants my occupational disability as I hope, then I guess I will go find something else to do with the rest of my life. If they (RRB) don’t - I will still find something else to do and thinking all the while that this life is sure going fast.
I sit before my only candle
Like a pilgrim sets beside the way
Now this journey appears before my candle
As a song that’s growing fainter the harder that I play
But I fear before I end I’ll fade away
But I guess I’ll get there though I wouldn’t say for sure --------- Jackson Browne
Miles Mulloy
That was ten years ago, Railroad retirement is a good thing , convert your auto to CNG , it is still exciting times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwHRKUHPLNU corprate video of the first train over the coal line
http://visionsurgeryrehab.evecommunity.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/3686055494
some people who have had bad out comes after refractive surgery
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