Roommates:

Imagine my roommate and his friends: a 5'7" asian ogre with a strange fascination with Step, and a nasty habit of playing Rock Band at midnight (Current song being massacred: Ballroom Blitz). Accompanying him are his asian entourage, because he has no friends of other races/is incapable of befriending anyone outside of his asian fraternity. All of them have an IQ of 100. Cumulatively.

Cockronaut

Oh, this poor cockronaut (cockroach astronaut). It has survived high voltage electrocution, freezing cold, extreme heat, and vacuum down to 5 millibar(I don't really approve of these tests). But he has survived, somehow, and is now flight worthy.

Side note: I am sick as a dog. Immodium, anyone?

Sent from my iPhone

DE NORFO

I just spent two and a half hours searching for my boss' journal references.

Background context: My boss is Korean.

Fact: one hour wasted because of confusion between cited "De Norfo," and actual article author name, "De Nolfo."

Should I laugh, or cry?

A final shot.

Last week, we visited Johns Hopkins' famous Wilmer Eye Clinic, and met with the head of the department regarding my eye condition. They took down a full hours' worth of data regarding my case history, then ran a significant array of tests. Guess what they found wrong with me?

Nothing.

More accurately, they found nothing that would explain anything. I had peculiarly bad 3D vision, apparently, but nothing else. Wonderful. So what treatment options do I have?

First: pupil-constricting eye-drops. They would shrink the overall light entering into the pupil and do it some good. Also, insurance would probably cover them. On the downside, prolonged use rather permanently deforms the lens, and therefore I would likely become extremely nearsighted. Considering my left eye has ~20/15 vision and my right ~20/20, I don't particularly like that idea.

Second: pressure reducing drops. A bizarre, rather inexplicable correlation between my bad eye days and my intraocular pressure has consistently occurred. Not sure if this implies causation, but at this stage, anything is game.

Third: prosthetic contacts. Most pleasing solution to me (though a glaucoma drop + contact combination would please me more), in that it reduces the size of the pupil artificially by overlaying a fixed, tiny aperture. In my opinion this would do me a world of good; first, it limits light going into my eye. Second, it stays there all the time - no taking it on and off, nor would I have any issues with carrying them around like sunglasses. Third: my eyes dilate oddly and do it more with sunglasses on, so if I have a small aperture in combination with attenuated light levels, I should really get some healing going. Fourth: if my theory that my surface eye problem results from the pupil spasm affecting the focusing mechanism, then in theory this could completely solve that problem by having a fixed aperture. Fixed aperture = constant focus at a fixed distance. If that problem goes away, then I have a life again. I could read, watch movies... do about a thousand more things than I can do now.

To get any of those treatments, though, I need to go back to Dr. Cheung again, because the neurophthalmology guys couldn't prescribe anything for me. That only means a wait until Wednesday - so why get in a huff about it?

Maybe because we came up with all those possible treatments a month ago and no one would let me pursue them because it might affect the Johns Hopkins visit. The result of which was that the doctor said "sure, those are all good ideas, go after it." I wasted a month waiting for a magic "Dr. House Cure" (as my mom puts it) while sitting around getting worse. Bughrtrhgh.

Drugos Medicales

I just started a trial of corticosteroids for my eyes. If this solves my eye problems, I will dance naked in the streets.

Re-normalization

Over the last several months, my general health condition and state of being have, for the most part, gone down the crapper.

My eyes have suffered a continual state of pain on two fronts: the back of my eye has endured terrible photophobic pain, and the front of my eye has felt what I can only describe as thousands of needles all stabbing at once when I watch TV or read. After a great deal of investigation I have concluded that lasers in the physics lab affected my eyes; however, the affectation would not have occurred were I not at the time taking a triple-header of allergy medicines that adversely affect eye sensitivity.

I have since cut out all of these medicines from my bloodstream, and it appears to have done some good. My eyes have not fully recovered and I can't surely say they will, but they do appear to have mended a bit.

What I never expected from this whole ordeal was the mental toll the eye problems have wrought. The sensitivity to light makes it impossible for me to go outside without sunglasses on. You want to walk outside to let someone into the apartment and you make them wait in the cold because you can't find your sunglasses. You want to go look out the window to check the weather - but first, sunglasses. Is it raining? Sorry, still have to put them on. I just desperately want to see the world just for once unfiltered by a piece of grey plastic.

And this has made practically every branch of my field of study that I know of seriously dangerous to my vision. What field of interesting physics doesn't use a laser? I don't have the brains to do only theory. I don't have the eyes to do the goddamned experiments. What the hell is left?

So maybe I get a job in physics researching something boring but without lasers. Now my job is not only unsatisfying, but really hard to boot. Who does physics just because they can do the job? I might as well take some shit job at some shit workerbee business.

I have also had absolutely no girlfriend or even dates for about two years now. The only two girls who have even flirted with me in that time didn't work out at all - one was almost three years younger than me (and even more young in mental age) and another was batshit insane. And, of course, I had to go and fall for a friend of three years who has never really shown any attraction to me whatsoever. Good fucking job on my part.

I have no direction; I just amble feebly from week to week in the hopes of some good news coming along occasionally. But frankly, this will never happen unless I do something to change all of this, but what can I change? I've looked at so many options and they all have the same problems regarding my eyes. What on earth do I do with my life?

Worn out and confused.

Haven't posted here in a while. Where did all the posts go?