          
|
September 14, 2011 7:53 PM Lasers And The Ability To See Clearly Tomorrow morning Kristi and I are going to go get her eyes lasered. Whenever I hear that word, laser, I usually think of Johnny Five in Short Circuit destroying tanks from a thousand yards away with his bright, red laser. Now I am about to turn my wife over, the woman I love, to a doctor who is going to literally burn her eyes with a laser beam, in the hope of correcting her vision. Actually, the process is quite fascinating if you forget temporarily that we're talking about someone's eyeballs... First they use a special 'knife' to cut part of your eye off, making what they call a 'flap'. Then that flap is pulled back, exposing the lens itself. This is the part the laser lasers, causing it to reshape. Then they drop the flap back into place, and voila - you can see. Over time the flap heals back into place. The whole operation takes about 7 minutes (or so they claim.) The rest of the 5 hours is prep. So we shall see. It ought to be an interesting day tomorrow. Oddly enough, it's a work problem that is causing me stress at the moment. Nevermind the pending perforation of my dear wife's eyes... Although really — if you think about it, can you imagine the stress the VERY FIRST person to get laser eye surgery done must have felt as he laid back in that chair and stared into the light? I mean, I'm sure they tried it on a few cadavers or something — but to be the first person to have that done?! Talk about a gamble. Either you win big and have better eyesight, or you lose it all and are blind the rest of your life! If you think about it though, there probably aren't too many people experiencing real firsts anymore. I was reading through the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible last week, and in it David, the author, writes that nothing is new under the sun - everything that has been done will be done again. My first reaction to that was, Well what about technology? But really, what is technology? New ways of doing old things? Maybe some of the things technology lets us do may be new, but I imagine most aren't far off a better way of doing something that has been done in the past... Email? People have been sending letters to each other for thousands of years. It's faster, easier, and cheaper - but new? Not really. Actually, this is the kind of topic I'd love to have you all over to my house, sit down, drink some tea and discuss. Of course, we could do it online — but not all new things are better. Kristi and I have volunteered to host a small group at our church, and although I'm a bit nervous (read terrified) at the prospect, I'm also excited as well. BACK to Journal Index |