My knees have been taking up so much of my attention for the past year that any other medical needs have fallen by my mental wayside. (My knees are still in play, as it were. My other knee is bone-on-bone and will need to be replaced at some point. Today I received the good news that our insurance will cover the gel (not jello, darn it) shots that will postpone more surgery for a while. But I digress.)

In the meantime, we get to consider Dan’s eyes. He’s been complaining for quite some time that his glasses are all scratched up and he needs new ones. Imagine our surprise when we went to an ophthalmologist and were told that his glasses lenses were fine. It was the lens of his eye that needed replacing. What he had assumed were scratches and fog on his specs were actually specks on his cornea. (Some time ago, he had a problem with his retina that resulted in a massive flash of light, followed by a large “vitreous floater” in one eye. Ever the wit, he named it “Freddy the Free-Floater,” a joke you have to be of a certain age to get. But I digress some more.)

So cataract surgery is in his future, most likely in August, he thinks, because it will then be too hot to work outside in the garden. Sweat rolling down into his eyes likely won’t help his vision any, either. (No, I will not be repeating the racist joke about cataracts, though (of course) I will be thinking it. But I digress yet again.)

The whole notion gives me the willies (or “wiggins,” if you’re a Buffy fan). I find the idea of anything touching anyone’s eyeball nauseates me. That’s one reason I could never wear contact lenses. Thinking about a sharp instrument like a scalpel poking Dan in the eye is my idea of a horror show. The only thing worse I can imagine is said pointy object (“Mr. Pointy,” if you’re a Buffy fan) approaching my eye. (I’m so squeamish about my eyes that I chose an ophthalmologist who was a black belt in the martial arts class I attended. I figured if I freaked out when being given eyedrops, he could subdue me. But I digress even more.)

For a couple of days after his operation, Dan won’t be able to drive. (In point of fact, he’s having trouble driving now, so it won’t be much more of a handicap.) I’ll get to help him by driving him around (now that we have a car with power steering) and also by putting in his eye drops (and throwing up afterward).

Personally, I hope they’ll make him wear an eye patch. I have this thing for pirates (of the Caribbean and of Penzance, in particular). The day I met Dan, he was wearing a patch over one eye because the lens had fallen out of his glasses, and he looked appropriately piratical. (He also had on a t-shirt that said “Dr. Demento,” which was another point in his favor. The rest is history. (This is the Reader’s Digest Condensed (or “clean”) version of how we met.) But I digress nostalgically.)

Dan, obviously jealous of all the attention my knees have been getting, had his own x-rayed the other day. Merely arthritis and some torn cartilage, so no fun with operations, infections, PT, and other indignities in his near future. Now we just have to arm wrestle over who gets the next operation, my knee or his eyeball. Frankly, I think the odds are ever in his favor at arm wrestling. Maybe I should hold out for a round of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.