The Darkness

As always, the office was cold this morning. I'm not sure whether it's the single-paned windows, or the lack of adequate heating in the building, but after about ten minutes at my desk, my hands and feet are freezing. On the bright side, this usually affects the claimants too, and therefore they're less likely to yap like there's no tomorrow if they're shivering. My first patient of the morning, however, was not one of those patients.

I had passed her in the hallway leading to the office, her extra-large Harley Davidson of Las Vegas t-shirt hanging off her "old lady smoker" frame. She was dressed all in black, complete with a black driving cap, and large black sunglasses which she wore as she entered the exam room door. I had had the chance to look through her medical records before seeing her, and found that she had suffered a minor stroke that left no residual problems, and that she had previously applied for disability stating that she couldn't work because "I'm all messing [I kid you not] up." After a brief introduction, she stated that she couldn't work because she had "difficulty seeing." Her vision, according to the exam performed by my secretary was 20/30 (in case you didn't know, that means that she can see at 30 feet what a "normal" person can see at 20 feet." I asked her if she wore glasses or contacts, she replied no. I then asked her if she had seen an eye doctor recently, and she responded that she hadn't seen a doctor in four years. She also stated that she had lots of medical problems, but stopped taking her medications because her 1st husband had died of liver cancer, and she just knew that if she took medication, she'd get liver cancer, too. I tried to direct the questioning back to her vision, and the following conversation occurred.

"So you say that you can't see very well. Does that mean you can't see objects near or far or what?"
"It's really the lights that bother me...I tend to stay in the dark most of the time, and I can't really see well in the dark."
"So your main issue is that you can't see well in the dark?"
"Yeah, and that fluorescent lights, just like these," she gestured to the ceiling, " they often give me mini-strokes."
"And that's why you stay in the dark most of the time?"
"Yeah. That and I like the dark. No one can see you if it's dark."
"Well...that's true...I guess. Is that why you're wearing sunglasses right now?"
"Yeah, that and I like to play poker."
"...Ah, I see."
"Oh! I sometimes see things, too, when it's dark."
"Oh really? Like what?"
"Well, steak knives...mostly. I'll go to reach for them though, and I miss them."
"Because you can't see well in the dark?"
She clicked her teeth. "Now you're thinking."
She proceeded to tell me that her loss of...dark vision...also hampered her ability to play pool. In fact, she related, that was the main reason she sought disability, to help her regain her night-sight to play pool in "really smoky joints." The history complete, I moved on to her physical exam...which was negative for anything. Granted, I performed it with the lights on...maybe I should've turned them off. Eh...no.

And now for the disability quote of the day:

Me: "How tall are you?"
Claimant: "Around 5 feet, 3 and 3/8ths inches"
Me: "That's very specific"
Claimant: "I got a big scale..."

Wear your sunglasses at night,
-DD