Put it all on Red

Today my eyes are dry from staring at a monitor. Sometimes I wonder if I am doing some permanent damage to them with this type of work. When I was in college I worked part time at a bank. I stared at a screen there doing basic date entry. I began to get headaches and ended up being prescribed glasses to wear when I worked. To this day I still have 20/20 vision and don’t wear the glasses anymore but I can’t help but think that we must be doing something to our eyes by constantly gazing into this LCD screen. Maybe someday we’ll find there was some truth to our mothers telling us not to sit too close to the TV. Yesterday I was listening to my favorite talk show on the radio, Frosty, Heidi and Frank on 97.1. The topic was the ban of Ephedra by the FDA. Ephedra is some sort of Chinese herb used in the over-the-counter diet pills. One product that was using it was Metabolife. This product sold for about $30 a bottle. As of yesterday, it was off the shelves but you can apparently now go to Ebay and bid for it. During the show they found it listed for as much as $150 with the bid not closing for 2 more days. My ex recently lost her best friend. She died from complications following a gastro intestinal bypass surgery. She was a 31 year old woman who had struggled with her weight for her entire life. Yes she was overweight; I’d say probably by around 100 pounds give or take. Studies have shown that 1 in 200 people have died from this type of surgery. The purpose of my bringing these subjects up is to consider the risks we take with our lives and health. We all take risks everyday and our levels of risk vary from person to person, situation to situation. Is it worth it to me to potentially put my eyesight in danger for my career, livelihood and for entertainment purposes? I guess the answer to that is yes since I have been doing it for years. I have to admit I also did take Metabolife once about five years ago. I felt like I was on coke and that was not a good thing when I was trying to conduct a computer training class at work. I did lose some weight but not enough to offset the side effects. I stopped after two weeks. I have never been so overweight to consider the extreme surgery, but I really don’t believe I would take that big of a risk. I am not opposed to some plastic surgery and can’t say I wouldn’t consider it for myself at some point, though. I just realized this could turn out to be a very lengthy entry. So, I’ll leave it as this. We should all from time to time consider how much value we place on our life, our personal health and safety and also how much of a gamble we would take to obtain our goals, whether they be aesthetic, monetary or some other form.