For years, I’d been getting reminders for a bi-annual eye exam. This time, I finally went. No major issues—just some blurriness I chalked up to screen time or medication.
The clinic seemed professional. Nice office, polite staff, all the trappings of competence. But the actual exam? A joke. They rushed through the tests, mumbled something about me needing glasses, and had me out the door in under an hour. No real questions, no curiosity—just another patient processed. I left feeling like they didn’t care, just wanted to tick a box and ensure I’d come back to pad their bottom line.
Then, hours later, it hit me: I still have two obvious foreign objects lodged in my right eye. One from childhood, another more recent. They’re right there—dark, visible—yet not a single specialist ever mentioned them. Not during scans, not when shining lights in my eyes, never.
How does that happen? Are they that indifferent? Do they just assume patients will beg for every scrap of attention? I shouldn’t have to point out “Hey, doc, there’s literal debris in my eye since I was a kid” for it to be noticed.
It’s not just this one visit. The older I get, the more I see how broken the system is. We’re taught to trust doctors, to believe they’ll look, listen, act—but so many just go through the motions. Now I’m knee-deep in stories about medical negligence, misdiagnoses, and preventable deaths… and it all clicks.