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You are listening to Carrie Letz's Financial
Survival Network, where you get valuable information

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Welcome. I'm Carrie Leutz. This
is Financial Survival Network and it's time

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for another Triple Lutz Report. And
this is Triple Lutz Report for ninety four.

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So as you may have known if
you listen to a few there were

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more recent shows. I'm in Thailand. I'm living the life of a digital

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nomad. It's been a real blast. I've met some incredible people here.

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Thai people really are the most gracious, warmest, friendliest people you'll ever come

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into contact with. I spent time
with somebody who's an FSN community member.

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I met his wife, their friends, and wound up hanging out with them

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for a number of days. It's
been great. So fast forward, have

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a medical emergency. It's what you
always dread when you travel, and I

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have traveled a lot. The worst
I ever wound up doing was going to

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a doctor's office because I had a
cold or a sinus infection something like that.

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And that was in the United States. But here I am in Thailand

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in a city that is south of
the Bangkok Pataya, and you know,

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I'm hanging out here with my friends
and I noticed, like I'm starting to

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get something's happening to my eye.
And I've had a lot of issues with

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my eyes, never vision threatening,
thank goodness, but over the years had

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RK that's refractive surgery that caused me
to become extremely far sighted, to have

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what it's called higher order aberration,
meaning halos and things like that like glare

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at night. And I've basically addressed
it all. I've been fine. Well,

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you know, many many years ago, I had a retinal tear,

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small retinal tear on the very very
peripheral of my retina at it laser surgery

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thirty years ago, not thinking anything
about it. Now fast forward to a

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few years ago. I have this
thing called a vitreous gel detachment. And

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your eye is filled with a vitreous
gel. And when you get to my

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advanced age, you know, mid
sixties, it's not unusual to have a

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detachment. In fact, you could
have it as early as fifty years old.

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So I had into my left eye
a few years ago. I went

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right off to the ophthalmologist. You
know, I was seeing floaters, flashes,

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and what they do is they can't
really see the vitreous detachment, but

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they diagnosed it by the process of
elimination. He told me, then,

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look, you're having a vitreous gel
detachment and it should go away in two

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weeks. And the giveaway is the
fact you're having this big floater. And

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I've had floaters before, they fall
to the bottom of the eye and not

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really your brain filters them out.
Sure enough, two weeks later it was

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gone. Didn't think anything of it. So here I am in Thailand and

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I see this thing happen again.
I figure, it's just the vitreous gel

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detachment. Let's see what happens.
And the first day or two nothing happened.

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But then a couple of days ago, three days ago, I start

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walking down the street and it's like, I think, wow, that's weird.

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It looks like black ink is on
my eye. And then after a

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few minutes it dissolves. I think, well, that's interesting. We have

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to keep an eye on that.
I don't know, maybe I got something

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in my eye on the street here. And then a few hours later happens

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again, and I realized that this
ink is actually blood, and I'm freaked

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out. I'm not sure what to
do. I'm freaked out my eyes.

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You know, it's one thing.
You hurt your knee, you hurt your

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ankle, you break a finger,
and whatever, you deal with it,

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but your eyes or your eyes.
And you know, I'm sitting around a

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few hours in my room figuring out
what to do, and it's happening periodically.

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So finally I call up my friend
and I said, look, actually

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I think I texted him, said
having this problem, what do you think

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I should do? And one of
the guys is English, he said,

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well, you know, I told
him I talk. I put in a

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call to my friend in the States, but it was five o'clock or four

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o'clock in the morning there, and
he wasn't going to be able to help

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me for a couple hours. I
didn't really want to call him and wake

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him up. And so the next
thing I know other thy friend her grandfather

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is an at themlogist at one of
the most prestigious hospitals in Bangkok, and

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she calls him up and he says, go immediately to the branch of the

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Bangkok Hospital that's near here, and
it's two miles from my hotel. So

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I take a taxi over. It
took forever to get there, and you

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know, I go talk to the
eye doctors and I was amazed the level

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of care, the quality, the
consideration, the way in which I was

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treated by the staff was just incredible. And I talked to the eye doctor

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said we got to dilate use so
we can look and see what's going on

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in the eye. And I'm calling
in the retinologist. So she was away.

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She came back in. Took about
an hour for her to get back.

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They kept boring different drops in my
eye, like six different times to

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dilated. Well. I start getting
scans. I start going, you know,

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one machine after in the next.
The equipment was state of the art.

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They had this thing called an oct
scanner and that actually maps your retina.

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And the doctor was extremely thorough And
after all the tests were done,

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she calls me in the office says, I got good news for you and

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I got bad news. What do
you want to hear first? I said,

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give me the good news. So
the good news is you don't have

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a retinal detachment, which is really
problematical. They can fix it, but

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your vision will be impaired. So
what you do have is a tear right

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in that area where you had the
tear the last time. Probably happened when

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the fluid was detaching from the retina. And look, there's some blood vessels

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there. I recommend laser surgery to
you. And I looked at her,

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I looked at all the equipment.
The fact, you know, I'm very

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knowledgeable about from a layperson standpoint about
ophthalmological matters, having had experience with them

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before, so I said for it. So takes me to a new I

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guess it was an eggsmber laser spends
about fifteen minutes zapping my retina, effectively

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spot welding my retina back together onto
the back of the eye. And it

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was a little uncomfortable at times,
but they had anesthetized the eye. And

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you know, then after I get
it done and I wait around for like

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ten or fifteen minutes, I can't
see anything because both of my pupils are

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dilated and it's letting into all the
light. So I had to wait around

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for like fifteen twenty minutes till they
closed up a little bit. Then I

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took a taxi back to the hotel
and then it was fine. I mean,

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I've still got lurriness in the eye
because the blood that seeped into the

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fluid it's going to take a few
weeks to two months to drain out,

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and then there's some floaters those will
eventually sink down to the bottom of the

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eye as well as blood. But
it was a scary thing. But what

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it made me realize is, you
know, the care that I received in

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the hospital was every bit as good
as the care that I've gotten in the

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United States. You know, in
this case, I wouldn't have had this

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procedure done in a hospital. I
would have gone to an eye clinic.

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I have an ophthalmologist who I trust
a lot. He is a former chief

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resident at the Baskum Palmer Institute,
which during its day still around but I

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think at the time was the top
I institute in the world. I knew

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people that went there who are blind
and literally walked out seeing So I would

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have gone to him, and I
will be going getting a follow up with

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him when I get back next week. It's just it freaked me out.

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But the fact is that they handled
it like I said, would have been

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done outpatient at a doctor's office.
And that's it for now. We will

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come back later. Thanks for listening
to carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your

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solution to today's trying times. For
the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot

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com. Financial Survival Network now more
than ever,