The Round-up

A major intent of this blog from, the beginning was to share information in the hopes of helping other people avoid some of my mishaps.
The key piece of information that cannot bear repeating enough is that boner pills such as Levitra, Viagra, and Cialis can cause permanent blindness.
The way this blog has been searched and found indicates that my experiences over the last few years almost places an obligation on me to give a less detailed but more thorough review of retina specialists in Rhode Island and New England and eye doctors who practice retina specialties.
My last post hailed Magdalena G. Krzystolik and I can recommend no one above her. Reasons include technical ability, integrity, honest communication with the patient and the fact that she demonstrated more interest in me as a patient than in patient payment. While educated here in the U.S., she was born in Europe and seems to lack American capitalist priority.
The other absolute positive referral should also be listed fist: Heinrich Krosschell. He is not a specialist but a general eye doctor. He himself knows this limit. He can give you general views by his experience but will not hesitate to tell you when a problem is beyond his scope. This honesty over both ego and profiteering earns him a lot of my esteem.
I saw two doctors with Koch Eye Associates. I recommend neither, nor the practice. Michael Negrey gained some points for looking into what could have been a thyroid problem, which others might criticize as unnecessary testing. He loses all regard however, because he has such a God Complex over his patients that he failed to communicate to me about most aspects of the cataract surgery. If I had been given the option of a lense that would have allowed close up vision, I would have a higher quality of life these days. Negrey made those decisions for me without consultation. He also utterly failed to inform me that the cataract procedure posed risk of triggering retinapathy. He failed to inform me of this despite knowing that one of his associates, Dr Michael O’Brien, was performing PRP laser treatments on me in the same time frame. Dr. O’Brien also did not inform me of the serious risk factors of the procedure he performed, including the fact that the procedure is almost guaranteed to cause at least some level of what it is supposed to prevent. O’Brien’s bedside manner was wonderful, but evoked the warnings of smiling at crocodiles. He scared me into the PRP due to the Cialis induced vitreous hemorrhage, despite being told that other retina specialists had willingly forestalled any such treatment after havin done multiple examinations of my eye. He seemed to care only about being a productive employee to Koch’s billing department.
Dr. Harold Woodcomb was one of the retina specialists who thought is safe to wait rather than rushing me into PRP laser. I saw him for a period of years and defected only when disillusioned by his failure to even consider the (documented) possibility that Cialis caused the vitreous hemorrhage. In hindsight, I probably should have stayed under his care rather than roving to people and practices that did more harm than good.
I had been seen once by a Dr. Smiley in Woodcomb’s Providence office. He attempted scare tactics to roll me into immediate PRP surgery. I can find little direct information about him as he seems to have disappeared. He no longer seems affiliated with Woodcomb’s practice and may be the Dr. Smiley working in California, but I am not sure of that.
I submitted to treatment a the Joslin Eye Center in Boston. They charge a lot of money, but no aspect of the care itself seemed to warrant their reputation as "best in the world." Dr. Deborah K. Schlossman barely examined me but added notes to my file that claimed to have informed me about things she never mentioned. Dr. Paul Arrigg seemed much better, but he strung me along for months with plans for procedures that it turned out he had no realistic intention of ever doing. In those months, the retinapathy worsened. If I had the reattachment done sooner, the outcome probably would have been better.
Prior to the hemorrhage, I had trusted my routine specialist care to John Loewenstein at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. I sought treatment there also under gullibility of world class reputation and ceased treatment after learning that I had other developing conditions in the eye that Dr. Lowenstein could not have been bothered to indicate to even the slightest degree.
I saw Dr. Arthur Geltzer in Providence in 1998. He was one of many doctors who used the "I do this surgery now or you will be blind in six months" scare tactics to get my money. With the experience of the past few years, I believe more than ever that if I had done the surgery then, I would have been blind in six months and then been told that I waited too long to have the surgery.
Patients need to run from any doctor who uses scare tactics, particularly the six month line.
A search through the blog will lead to more details about my experiences with most of the docs and quacks on the list.