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HERE I STAND Copyright © 2004 John Paul Minarik Jesus said, "Love your brother like your soul, protect that person like the pupil of the eye." The Gospel of Thomas (see footnote 1) The title of this introductory essay comes from the famous words spoken centuries ago by Martin Luther when he appeared in front of the Diet of Worms. When the Catholic Church was selling indulgences (free passes to Heaven from Purgatory), he stood against what, as his conscience told him, were corrupt practices of the church. Martin Luther posted his complaints, his Theses, not on a web site, but on a church door in Wittenburg. He was summoned before the Diet to recant. Under threat of his excommunication, Martin Luther faced surely the most powerful force on Earth at that time, a kind of board of trustees of the Catholic Church. He found that he could not back down from his beliefs, despite their power. He could not recant and say that the way they were making money was okay. He said: "Here I stand." On March 13, 2004, my brother, Kenneth R. Minarik, OD, was told by an e-mail sent by one David Hartzok, OD, FAAO, Executive Director, The Surgical Eyes Foundation, that the board of trustees of the Surgical Eyes Foundation had voted to excommunicate him from the surgicaleyes.com web site by removing his "posting privileges". Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. As a January 6, 2004 article by Rhonda L. Rundle published in the Wall Street Journal said: "People considering laser (eye) surgery should be aware of the potential problems. Web sites, including surgicaleyes.com and lasikdisaster.com, offer up horror stories." The surgicaleyes.com web site has been known to speak against the faith in LASIK, and my brother Ken has been protesting against over-selling of LASIK-indulgences from poorer vision, particularly without first giving persons an opportunity to give truly informed consent by adequately notifying them of the risks involved with LASIK surgery. Just as Martin Luther took his protests outside of the Catholic Church and started his own Protestant Reformation, so my brother Ken has taken his stand and started this new web site, DoctorMyEye.com, a place where persons with Refractive Surgery Post-Operative Complications Syndrome can gather to openly share their thoughts and feelings and to have an information forum. One of the first acts of Martin Luther after he broke with the Catholic Church was to have the Bible printed in the common language of the time, translated into German from Latin, so everyone could read the Bible for themselves and not just hear from Catholic priests what the word of God is. Luther's public dissemination of the Bible made possible by the Guttenburg printing press began the first true Information age. I am proud and humbled by my brother Ken for taking his stand. During most all of Ken's professional career as an Optometrist, which I have followed with great interest, he has been dealing with the subject of eye surgery to improve vision. Early on, he was the optometrist doing pre-surgical screenings for an ophthalmologist doing vision-correction eye surgery with a scalpel. With the use of a laser to reshape the cornea, the surgical procedure has become enormously popular. There is a new generation of laser eye surgery called wavefront-guided LASIK. While this is a popular, highly commercialized and profitable treatment, there are complication rates around 3%, a much higher rate than would be considered acceptable for conventional surgery. The people comprising the statistic of a 3% complication rate have miserable physical symptoms like dry eyes, night-vision problems, halos and the like. Their real physical problems give rise to all sorts of complicated emotions in the persons. The surgicaleyes .com web site was previously there for people who are dealing with their feelings about the harm that has been done to their eyes. Sometime there was depression. They are sometimes angry with themselves for having submitted to the LASIK procedure. Sometimes they are angry with the doctor who did the operation. There is a lot of hurt and pain in this 3% group of people, and for many years, many ophthalmologists and optometrists just tended to minimize the symptoms to their patients, almost telling them that they were just imagining the problems they were experiencing. My brother Ken is one of a group of doctors who has, more or less, changed sides in this arena. The surgicaleyes.com web site served as a support group/group therapy place for suffering patients to go. Partly as a result of Ken's work on surgicaleyes.com, where he was a voluntary member of their Medical Advisory Board, where he posted his Theses, he gave a talk at a recent International Conference of Disability Analysts where he first named the Refractive Surgery Post-Operative Complications Syndrome (RSPOCS). Ken is working towards having RSPOCS recognized as a legitimate disability, making persons eligible for insurance coverage for their physical and psychological problems brought on by LASIK treatments. Over the past several years, Ken has shared many typical postings at the surgicaleyes.com web site, where he has been an active contributor. It occurred to me, as I read those postings, that there are few, if any, professional psychologists and psychiatrists helping people to deal with RSPOCS. I had already referred Ken to the work of Dr. Herbert H. Thomas, an eminent psychiatrist who literally wrote The Book on recognizing and dealing with the shame response (see footnote 2). It is my hope that the DoctorMyEye.com web site will correct omissions from surgicaleyes.com and have some professional psychologists and psychiatrists on board. Because I believe in the stand my brother is taking against the seemingly unbridled power of the LASIK industry to sell their indulgences, I am volunteering to become the Artist-in-Residence for this new web site, an honorary position. You will be able to view, now and again, my postings. I am not an optometrist, an ophthalmologist, or a LASIK or RS patient, but I am an award-winning professional poet, having served as the Poet-in-Residence at another literary web site. My writings have appeared in The Online Reader and on other literary web sites. I am listed in A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, Directory of distinguished Americans, International Who's Who in Poetry, Who's Who in America, and elsewhere. I won a juried competition to serve as a Poet-in-the-Schools for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, have taught many college-level courses for the University of Pittsburgh and for the Community College of Allegheny County, and co-founded a writer's organization, which was funded for many years by the National Endowment for the Arts. I am finishing up my new book, my fifth, and my writing has appeared in more than 100 literary magazines, like Confrontation, New Orleans Review, Painted Bride Quarterly and others. I earned degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in Mechanical Engineering and from the University of Pittsburgh In English and Psychology. I am certified as an engineer by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and am a full Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. I previously worked for the Central Engineering Construction Division of the United States Steel Corporation and as a Project Engineer for Economy Industrial Corporation. It is my intention to watch over the postings at DoctorMyEye.com and to occasionally contribute a poem or an essay inspired by those postings. It is ironic that a big reason why DoctorMyEye.com was able to come alive so quickly after the March 13, 2004 excommunication is because my brother Ken had been, for the past one-and-one-half years, working to help me get my own literary web site up and running. Jim Royster (see footnote 3) at New Millennium Technologies helped to create www.DoctorMyEye.com. Sometime In 2005, www.JohnPaulMinarik.com should be a place where persons can see some of my writings and order my books. To give you some sense of my writing, beyond this introductory essay, you will find several of my previously published poems posted here. I would like to think that my standing beside my brother Ken, as he makes his stand, might be of some help or some comfort or encouragement to someone who is suffering from Refractive Surgery Post-Operative Complications Syndrome. You are not alone. Thanks to Dr. Ken Minarik taking a stand, you have a new forum. Here I stand, too. 1. Meyer, M. (Translator), The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1992) p. 35. 2. Thomas, H., The Shame Response to Rejection (Sewickley: Albanel, 1997). Dr. Thomas has a web site located at: www.theshameresponse.com. He may be reached by e-mail at: author@theshameresponse.com. 3. For new web site construction, please allow me to recommend to you the work of New Millennium Technologies. Their web site is located at: www.NewMillenniumTech.com, and they can be reached by e-mail at: Sales@NewMillenniumTech.com. (the end) |
