Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories

My mother had outpatient cataract surgery on Thursday.  It’s amazing the possible upgrades, replacements, enhancements and other medical procedures which can be done these days – even into our old age.   But, assuming that healthcare is going universal in the US sometime soon,  I can only imagine the complexity of the bureaucracy which will be introduced.   From the number and variety of questions that the eye clinic’s intake specialist pleasantly fired off at my mother, I would have thought it was her first visit to that clinic, that she had not paid sums in addition to her insurance, and that computers histories were not instantly available on each patient.  If this encounter was any clue,  we may hope for longer lifespans, if only to complete the forms and actually be treated by a doctor.   Until such time as the system gets hopelessly bogged down, my mother will be able to read and understand, if not be as  enthusiastic in filling out forms and questionaires – as long as the administrators realize that she may require their attention by critiquing and circling the questionaires omnipresent grammatical and spelling errors.