Saturday, March 26, 2005

Beware my laser eyes!

I just got LASIK today. It went well, and now I have a bunch of short thoughts that can't really be expanded. This isn't an effect of LASIK (I hope) -- it's an effect of me staying up too late.

-I appreciated the importance of the doctor and nurses' small-talk with me in the operating room. It's a little scary to have your eye taped open so a large machine can do something mysterious to it, and the banter distracted me from that.

-During said banter, I gave increasingly specific descriptions of what I studied: "Philosophy" then "Ethics" then "How moral facts fit into the scientific picture of the world." I really need to not say that last one anymore; the doctor suddenly started talking about The Da Vinci Code. Maybe if I say "What moral facts are, and how we can know them" that'll be better.

-I've seen this thing before, often at doctors' and dentists' offices, where the top person in a medical practice is a man, and all the others are women. Mostly the women take care of you, but at the end of whatever you're doing the man comes by and does something quick but (supposedly or actually) important. I'd like to think that this isn't evidence of sexism somewhere, but I keep seeing it and I don't know how else to explain it.

-While my vision is still a little foggy, it's almost at the level my glasses took me to, and it'll only get better.

-The procedure temporarily made my eyes very light-sensitive, so they gave me sunglasses. I was hoping for someone to ask me why I was wearing them, so I could say "I just had laser surgery on my eyes today. Now I have to wear these, or my eyes might shoot laser beams and destroy everything." Nobody asked, but I can still post it here. Wonderful are blogs.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's the obvious sexism, and then there's the not-so obvious sexism. The top jobs take a lot more training and education (ie doctors vrs. nurses) which costs more money and comes at a time in life when many women are getting married and having widdle babies. babies + medschool = bad. babies + medschool bills = bad. babies + that internshippy thing doctors do where they're at the hospital for 48 hours straight = bad.

and unfortunately, women still do most of the baby/childrearing in our society, so they're the ones taking maternity leave, working fewer hours to pick them up from school, etc., and so don't get the same promotions men do and just can't invest the same time...

in law, for example, there's an exponential difference between what partners and associates make. partners are mostly male. they aren't chosen (most of the time) that way because the law companies are filled sith sexist bigots who want to hurt women. the lawyers who put in the most hours over the course of their seven years or so as associates get promoted to partner.

and who's more likely to be putting in those extra 5 to 10 hours per week? the woman who has to pick her kid up from soccer practice because her husband is 'just too busy', or the guy whose wife is taking care of their kid, anyway?

Neil Sinhababu said...

Yeah, that's pretty sure to be one of the big factors.

wirrdo said...

wait... didn't you already have laser eyes?

Neil Sinhababu said...

Shh! Matt! only you're supposed to know that.