Pointless trying to describe this… sensation? Phenomenon? Can only be experienced.
Since my cataract surgery (two months ago) colors have gotten more intense. More so in the past couple of weeks? The feint yellow tint caused by the old lenses is gone. For some reason this is most noticeable with blues and whites. A clearer, brighter world awaits you.
We’re going to remove the hardened, cloudy lenses from your eyes by breaking them up with an ultrasound device, and then sucking the particles out. We will then insert a flexible silicone based lens. Over the next eight weeks, we will use a special ultraviolet light device to change the shape of the lenses to give you the desired vision. For those eight weeks, it will be necessary for you to wear special UV protection goggles anytime that you are not in bed asleep. After the three adjustments are complete, will use the ultraviolet light device to lock in the shape of the lenses. 24 hours later, you can dispense with the UV goggles.
Gotta say it. Been a long eight weeks. It doesn’t appear that we achieved the glasses-free outcome we were shooting for, we got close. I uploaded my new prescription and the one from a year ago to Perplexity:
Your 2026 glasses prescription is dramatically lower power than your 2025 prescription, reflecting how the LAL+ has moved most of the focusing work into the lens implants instead of the spectacles. In 2025 you needed full‑time distance correction plus a significant bifocal/progressive add just to get comfortable reading. With the LAL+ lock‑ins, your intraocular lenses now provide most of the distance focus, so the new glasses are more like fine‑tuning for small residual refractive error and astigmatism rather than heavy lifting.
Pre-surgery I was using 3.5 (prescription) reading glasses for books, phone and laptop. Post-surgery I can see the computer and phone fine and making do with 1.5 readers for books. Jury still out on the all-important distance acuity. Hoping the new prescription (see above) will give me the sharpness and clarity I was hoping for.
About the photo above… For the last two months I had to wear special UV glasses whenever awake. Today at one o’clock I can ditch them. New glasses will arrive in ten days.
From an article in The Atlantic (that is behind a paywall):
“The (British) health service now has to spend more money settling maternity-malpractice claims than it does on actually providing maternity care. Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their own teeth or gluing broken crowns back together.
Incomes can be shockingly low: Junior doctors recently went on strike for the 15th time in three years over their salaries, which start at just £38,800; the median salary for British civil servants is £35,680.”
From my dentist friend, Bob:
No wonder so many come to the states. Have a good friend who is one of two radiation oncologists at (a local hospital) who just retired. The other oncologist told (the hospital administration) since he was now the only one that he wanted a salary of 1.4 mil. They told him see ya! They’re now looking for two. Pay much better in US but some are really greedy.
Following excerpt from Dr. Eric Topol’s Ground Truths:
“MIRA queried the patient’s history, the physical exam results, and could order labs, blood cultures, scans, medications, procedures, surgery, and triage for hospital admission. This was done in 500 emergency department established real cases with the MIRA results directly compared to 4 board-certified (BC) physicians, and also to a hybrid group of 2 BC physicians and 2 residents. […] The overall diagnostic accuracy for MIRA was 87.8% compared with BC physicians at 78.1%.”
Next week I have the first of two procedures to remove the cataracts that have finally started affecting my vision. It’s a pretty simple “surgery” that takes about 15 minutes (don’t even have to take my shoes off!)
My ophthalmologist has recommended light adjustable lenses (LALs) which will require a series (three?) UV light adjustments a few weeks following the second surgery. More expensive and more visits but the best option for getting back to near 20-20 vision. Continue reading
“NVIDIA recently announced a suite of physical AI tools designed to let developers train surgical and service robots inside virtual hospital environments before they ever touch a patient. The centerpiece is a developer blueprint called Rheo which generates physically accurate simulations of hospital settings — modeling medical device interactions, human movements and logistics — so that robotic systems can be safely developed and tested in digital twins.” More »
Last October I had a robotic colectomy during which my surgeon used the Da Vinci Robotic Surgical System. No AI was involved but using AI tools to train surgical robots sounds like a good idea.
How good are these AI tools? A prototype (GR00T-H) has demonstrated the ability to execute a complete, end-to-end suture in the SutureBot benchmark, highlighting robust long-horizon dexterity.
All pharmaceutical companies seem to come up with bizarre made up names for their drugs. I asked Google’s Gemini to explain why this is so.
Gemini: Drug naming is a collision of three high-stakes worlds: trademark law, regulatory safety, and marketing psychology. The “bizarre” names you see are rarely the result of a creative whim; they are what’s left after a thousand more sensible names have been rejected. Here is why they sound like they were generated by a broken algorithm:
Yesterday I received an “Explanation of Benefits” from the company that provides my supplemental insurance to cover what Medicare does not. This is the first summary of some of the billing for my abdominal surgery. I’m sure there will be more to come.
This adventure started on September 23 and included doctor visits, blood tests, CT scans, scopes, surgery and all the rest. Total amount billed through November 25: $109,346.68. Total amount paid by my supplemental insurance: $303.31. My financial responsibility: $2,624.57. (This is the amount the provider may bill me after everything is paid.) I thought it would be more.
Not sure how much Medicare will pay before all is said and done. But without that coverage, I would have been on the hook for $100K+.
Watch on YouTube (3:30)
Colorectal surgery for a non-malignant growth-when performed electively in a stable patient-has a survival rate exceeding 99%, making it one of the safest major abdominal operations in modern practice. It was a very long month.
In a recent blog post Seth Godin linked to a company that’s using colonoscopy awareness in its marketing. (“Wear your ass on your sleeve. Every purchase helps fund colonoscopies for the underinsured.”) From their mission statement.
Colonoscopies prevent colon cancer, they don’t just diagnose them early. This makes them the best cancer screening EVER, hands down. Unlike other diagnostic screening tests, a colonoscopy can also remove polyps in the colon that can grow into fatal tumors. Super inspiring, right? But many people are wary of the procedure because of how it’s been talked about for 50 years: “invasive”, “hassle”, “awful”. And maybe that was true in the past, but today, it’s more like a spa appointment than a scary hospital visit: it’s essentially a fast, a cleanse, and a nap!
You can request laxative pills instead of the dreaded “colonoscopy cocktail.” Fasting can include gummy bears, and the end flush is often calm, comfortable, and non-dramatic. So given the choice between a mildly unpleasant doctor’s visit or a potentially fatal diagnosis, we will back that ass up every time!
I’ve had two colonoscopies in the last two weeks (one was a sigmoidoscopy) and the prep wasn’t pleasant but a small price to pay for a life-saving procedure. The GI doc removed a small polyp (non-malignant) and biopsied a small mass (also non-malignant). A week from tomorrow I’ll have surgery to remove that bad boy before he has a chance to turn badder. Stay tuned.