May 20, 2002

9:20 AM

The doctor will not see you now. Jane Poulson developed Type I diabetes at 13. Her vision deteriorated drastically while she was in medical school, and despite several rounds of surgery, she lost her sight. She graduated anyway and became Canada's first blind practicing medical doctor. Then things got worse.
posted by maudlin (10 comments total)

I truly don't mean to derail the thread before it even begins, but I have to ask why you used Make A Shorter Link to post this article. I understand it's usefulness in some cases, but without any sort of title attribute or some indication of where the link is initially going to go [from MeFi that is], it's a bit off-putting. Especially when it's a service that could disappear at any time leaving us without a valid link to the actual article. I'll grant you the article could disappear just as easily, but at least it's not a link twice removed.
posted by mikhail at 9:42 AM on May 20, 2002

Besides, you get a java servlet error when you follow the MASL.
posted by SpecialK at 9:49 AM on May 20, 2002

To the article itself, *sniff*. That was beautiful. Made me weepy.
posted by dejah420 at 10:00 AM on May 20, 2002

Indeed, you may not want to read this link at work unless you have some privacy.
posted by tommasz at 10:22 AM on May 20, 2002

I've gotten in the habit of using Make A Shorter Link for Globe & Mail stories. I've had problems before using the G & M's mile long URLs. Add to that the fact that they only archive their stories online for 7 days, and it doesn't seem likely that MASL will go under in that time.

But given that the G&M URL you used, mikhail, seems to work just fine, I'll either use their URLs directly from now on or I'll start using the title attribute with any use of MASL. Thanks for the reminder.

(Re the java servlet error: no problem here running Win 2000 and IE 5.5, NS 6.2 and NS 4.7. What are you using, SpecialK?)
posted by maudlin at 10:28 AM on May 20, 2002

Thanks for the link, Maudlin. I was having one of those "why does everything have to go wrong" days at work....this article truly brought me up short and made me ashamed for complaining.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:43 AM on May 20, 2002

more off-topic: here is an alternative to makeashorterlink (with a shorter name):

urlizer
posted by o2b at 12:10 PM on May 20, 2002

Good post. Makes for good perspective adjustment on ones own life. I always like reading stories of people who suffer with dignity and grace. I'm certain she was a delightful woman to have known, gotten treated by, and have had as a friend.
posted by Jeremy at 5:18 PM on May 20, 2002

What a strange story.

I wouldn't trust a blind doctor. There seems to be a lot of looking involved in doctoring. (I have no problems with, say, a blind psychologist.) Every time I go to my doctor there's some sort of visual inspection. He looks at my throat, ears, or something else. In some not unexceptional circumstances, I imagine that to not do this would amount to malpractice.

Poulson specialises in "internal medicine"? What's internal medicine?
posted by mstillwell at 7:28 PM on May 20, 2002

mstillwell: internal medicine.
posted by juv3nal at 9:23 PM on May 20, 2002