A visit to Dr. Brash...
My baby pictures are hilarious, because I am cross-eyed in all of them. As I grew up, the problem "corrected itself," and my eyes only started to cross if I was very tired or drunk.

Lately the problem has been worsening, so I saw my eye doctor about it. He said that the problem is called strabismus, and that it never really went away. Over the years, I just got used to working around eyes that didn't quite point the same direction. He highly recommended that I go and have a consultation with an opthamologist he knows to see about correcting the problem.

For the purposes of this story, let's call the opthamologist "Dr. Brash." Because he was. In the continuing sitcom of my life, this was one of the more unbelievable chapters.

So I get to Dr. Brash's office, and after I've waited for an hour (which, granted, is par for the course with doctors), he comes in the examining room with two young women in tow. The women are wearing lab coats and look like medical professionals, but the doctor, in build, demeanor, and even dress, could be a high school gym teacher.

"Hey, I'm Dr. Brash, and these girls will be helping me out today. Tell him where you're from, girls."
The two girls meekly squeak out words loaded with impossible combinations of consonants.
"Can you repeat what they said to you?"
"No," I admit.
"Me neither. I just say they're from Russia."
I assume that these girls were shadowing Dr. Brash in some sort of exchange program, but their presence was never actually explained.

I told the doctor about my history with strabismus, and that I brought some photos of it happening, because it doesn't usually manifest first thing in the morning. I show him my digital camera, and he passes it on to the girls without so much as a cursory glance.

"Bah! I can make it happen now. Watch."
He takes out one of those spoon-shaped eye blockers and starts covering one eye and then the other.
"Look at the H! Keep looking at it!" he barks.
Of course, I can't see the H, or the chart the H is on, because there's a skittish Russian woman standing in the way.
"There, I did it. I'll show you," Dr. Brash says. "Gimme that camera."
He grabs the camera and fires off a flash photo six inches from my face, then thrusts the camera back at me.
"See?"
The photo is just a crooked, overexposed white field with a fully-dilated pupil staring out of it.

The doctor did another 45 seconds worth of exams on my eyes, holding up various prisms and gadgets while furiously scribbling on a chart and rattling off numbers and medical terms.

"You need surgery," he says.
"What are my other options?"
"Crossed eyes."

This sort of dismissive banter is funny when it's coming from the cigarette-smoking doctor on Battlestar Galactica. Not so much when it's really happening.

"Aren't there exercises I could do?"
The doctor lets out a deep, derisive sigh.
"Oh sure. I could charge you to do exercises all day. It's not going to fix it, but I can charge you for it if you want. See that picture?"
He points to a photograph of five children.
"My youngest one had this surgery. He's only five. I did it myself."
The clear intent of this aside was to say, "A five-year-old can do this. What are you, some kind of pussy?" but I heard it as, "When all you've got is a hammer, every eye is a nail."

"Have you had your eye pressure checked?" he asks.
"I uh... I don't think so."
"Girls! You know how to do an eye pressure?"
The girls tense up and squint in the way that says, "Oh shit, he's talking to us. What is he saying?" One of them ventures an answer.
"Mmm. Yes?"
The doctor grabs a machine.
"Well, yes or no?! This thing! Eye pressure! Have you ever used one of these?"
"Yes," the Russian says, with no more confidence. "Yes. Year ago."
"A year ago?!" the doctor snarls. "Jesus Christ, you people are supposed to be doctors. Just put some drops in him."
The Russian jumps to attention and puts some stinging yellow drops in one of my eyes.
"Do you... in bot' eyes?" she asks timidly.
"What!? Yes in both eyes! Why the hell would you just do one eye?"
She quickly puts the drops in my other eye and backs away. The doctor swings his machine into place and takes his measurement. My eye pressure is apparently fine, so he goes on with a few more prism tests before turning on the lights.

"It looks like you might have some double vision after we're done. The girls will tell you all about the surgery."
With that he storms out of the room, leaving me with the two Russians. Though they don't come anywhere close to actually relaxing, there is a palpable sense of broken tension.

"He seems like a joy to work with," I offer.
The girls just look at each other and at me and smile, like trapped animals.
"We are to do surgery," one of them says pointing at a plastic model of an eye. "Here. We cut. See?"
She sort of trails off with a desperate look on her face that says, "You get it, right? Please?"

By this point I can tell that this appointment is over, whether it's finished or not.
"Are we done here today?" I ask.
The second Russian answers. "No, no surgery today."
"No, I mean, are we finished? Can I go?"
The Russians look at each other and then back at me.
"You wait," one says. Then they leave the room.

A minute later another associate comes in, poorly hiding her confusion.
"So, I, uh... I'm supposed to schedule a surgery for you, or something? Right?"
It's immediately obvious that the Russians can't communicate any better with the staff than they can with the patients.
"Um, no," I say. "I'm not sure I want to have the surgery."
"Oh, okay, fine," the woman says, obviously relieved to finally be on the same page. "Okay then, I'll just get the doctor and have him write up your charges. I'll meet you at the desk."

I go to the reception desk and wait. I can see the doctor in the next examination room, arguing with some parents about their baby's eye condition.
"Well how can you tell what the kid is seeing? You can't. I know, I'm a doctor."

I'm standing there, waiting to check out, thinking, "Wait, this trip was a total bust. I don't know anything more now than I did when I came in here. I need to talk to the doctor some more."

So I just went back to my exam room and sat down. A minute later the doctor walks by, Russians in tow. He sees me and comes in.

"So, what's going on?" he says.
"You said that if I had the surgery, I could end up with double vision."
"You could."
"So... how is that better than what I have now?"
"Oh it's not. It's worse."
"So... why would I want to do that?"
The doctor sits down and leans back in his chair and lets out the most annoyed sigh I've ever heard.
"Oh, Jesus Christ. There are always risks, that doesn't mean it's going to happen. Did you drive here today?"
"Yes."
"Well you could have been in an accident and died. There was that risk, but you took it."
By this point I'm starting to get tired of being talked down to.
"Yes, but I understood that risk," I challenge. "I don't know anything about eye surgery, and you just drop it on me and then run off and leave me here with these two, who..."
I gesture to the Russians and stop myself. My beef isn't with them.

The doctor crosses his legs and puts down my chart in a big show designed to say, "Okay, look, I'm putting my busy day on hold just to talk to you. Like I don't have anything better to do."
"Look, I've been here working since 6:45 this morning," he says.

(It should be noted here that it was now about 8 AM.)

"You saw how many people I had out there in the waiting room. Somebody calls up and says that there's something wrong with their kid's eyes. What am I supposed to do, tell them not to come in?"
"I'm sorry," I say, getting up to leave, annoyed. "Just get back to them. Sorry to waste your valuable time."
"Wait, wait," the doctor says, his voice softening to the level of a warm-blooded mammal. "I don't like to waste my time or yours talking about surgery with people who aren't really serious about it. Are you serious about it?"
"How should I know? I don't know anything about it."
He gives me a few statistics, and I tell him that I'd like to get a second opinion and do some research.
"Fine, do your research," he says, waving me off dismissively. "You're not going to find anybody better at this than me. I'm the best there is."

I thank the doctor for his gracious service and go up to the desk to check out. With body language indicative of a child whose mother is making him apologize for kicking a stranger, a minute later Dr. Brash steps up and gives me a recommendation of a doctor I should go to for a second opinion. He looks at my chart, takes out a pocket voice recorder and dashes off a memo in a speech so rapid that chipmunks would ask him to slow it down. He then gives me a look like, "There, are we cool now?" and walks away.

"What was that?" I ask the receptionist.
"That was a memo," she says.
"Yes, but for whom?"
"For your doctor."
So I guess I'll have to call my regular doctor in a few days to see if I can get a copy of that memo to see if it contains any actual information. Heck, he might even talk to me about it.

Perhaps the best part is that it turns out that there was some complication with my insurance, so this fantastically satisfying fifteen minutes cost $225. I really felt like he earned it.

So now I don't know quite what to do. My regular eye doctor does think that Dr. Brash is the best person to do this surgery, and Dr. Brash certainly agrees. On the one hand, I am not a medical professional, and it makes sense to go with the doctors' opinions. On the other hand, this doctor is an asshole. And on the third hand, even if I did want to have the surgery, odds are I can't afford it anyway.

I don't really have a question. I just wanted to write this all down while it was still fresh in my mind. Any thoughts?