The Lydster, Part 104: The Medical Episodes

Thrice in the past month or so, the Daughter has awakened in pain.

First time, she had been experiencing right knee pain for a week, building into something she could not bear any longer. Her mother took her to the doctor that afternoon. She has Osgood-Schlatter disease, which is less a disease as a syndrome.

Doctor: my eye…

Sometime last month, I suddenly experienced some real pain on the left side of my left eye. It was as though someone had poked me in the eye. It was still inflamed on the fourth day, so I went to my eye doctor on the fifth day.

She said that I was suffering from angular blespharitis. I said, “in English.” Angular I know, and I know that -itis is a suffix suggesting inflammation. Basically, I have a stye in the corner of my eye. I was to use warm compresses, massage, and use of prescription ointment two or three times a day.

From eMedicineHealth:

“A sty is an acute infection of the secretory glands of the eyelids.

An American doctor's life

I’m very fond of my general practitioner. I’ve been seeing her for only about a decade, though it seems longer. Inevitably, when I have a visit, especially my physical, we talk. Actually, she talks more than I do.

One of the things she’s had to get used to is the conversion of a bunch of medical records from paper form to electronic form. This happened on her own dime a few years back, when she had to acquire the expensive – and not always reliable – software, and hire med students to input the info. Ideally, this meant that all of my current medications would then pop up on the screen, but no