Monday's are one of two big eye days at our hospital. On some days there may be 15 or more cases; cataracts, lens implants, and so forth. A great deal of eye surgery has become routine high volume stuff but, in fact, is a critical service for millions of people who are afflicted with cataracts and who regain effective vision from such procedures. Needless to say, a great many of the customers are well over the age of 65.
Last Monday as I was walking by the pre-surgery holding area I saw 3 husbands standing in the hallway, waiting for their wives to get situated in anticipation of surgery within the next 30 minutes or so. Tossed together by the necessity of their wives condition, they were suddenly talking and laughing nervously together about life and their immediate circumstance. It was too obvious and too good to resist: I had to stop and comment to the group: "So this is what's become of the father's waiting room 40 years later!" It was too funny and they immediately laughed and understood.
Before the age of birthing centers, birthing rooms, and making childbirth an event for the entire family to share in a "home like setting," the menfolk used to sit in an institutionally sterile waiting room, usually chain smoking cigarettes, while their wives were hauled off to the "delivery room" to have the baby "delivered." It happened several thousand times a day during the 40's and 50's. So here they are all these years later, still standing around together, finding support in the company of strangers, while the wives go off to have something done in the hospital.
Chalk it up to the Boomer generation: Opthalmology has become the new obstetrics for a whole lot of husbands out there.
Here's hoping the doctors deliver a wife with 20/20 vision, who can see well enough to say, "You're wearing that?!"
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