I couldn't sleep last night...

...so, I did this painting with children's gel paint sticks. And some felt tips, and white paint splattered.

I went to my optometrist appointment this morning and he read my typewritten words that I had written immediately after the eye hospital appointment in Liverpool last Tuesday, because I wasn't happy about it.

He said I had written a brilliant account. And because my account of what had been said by the junior doctor, my optometrist said he knew exactly what had happened, and what had been diagnosed and why.

My optometrist doesn't have the advanced equipment the eye hospital has, but he has been trained in all the procedures. And he can do a similar examination by eye, and from that he would refer a patient to an eye hospital as urgent if necessary.

He said he knew exactly what he was going to find from my typewritten description of my hospital appointment.

He examined my eyes, then said yes I did have acute angle closure. It's graded from 1 to 4.

3 and 4 are okay.

But 1 to 2 needs treatment.

I don't have glaucoma, but this is a sudden onset glaucoma, which is not very common. And I am a 1, just barely a 2. So I need this laser treatment as soon as possible.

This type of glaucoma happens in a day, suddenly, or even two days and you lose your eyesight immediately. Unless you get external symptoms as headaches, which I do not have, and a list of other things, there is no warning in time to save your eyesight.

He said if I didn't want to go back to the Liverpool eye hospital, he could arrange for a referral to a nearer Welsh hospital, but that would mean starting from scratch, even though it is urgent, and it could be another 3 months before I got the laser treatment. Whereas this appointment I was sent from the Liverpool eye hospital, that I got on Saturday is for mid-May.

So, it's no contest really.

My optometrist was still amazed I could lipread and then relate, by typewritten written word, just about every accurate detail of that hospital appointment. He said even hearing people cannot do that. A hearing person would have generally given a garbled account. They would have panicked and then not taken anything in.

The thing is, I don't always understand a conversation as I am lipreading it, especially if there is a lot of information, so consequently I don't assimilate it (like a hearing person does, hence their probable panic), but I can recall a whole afternoon of lipreading as I did in that eye hospital, almost like a video and I can replay it in my mind and write it down (preferably typewriting it), and be pretty much accurate.

Anyway, apparently it was obvious to my optometrist that it was a very junior doctor who was being trained on the job, who didn't have people skills, had very poor communication skills, was contradictory in his assessment of me, etc etc, because he was unsure of himself and was still being trained and didn't know how to make a correct assessment with his findings in front of him, and was all over the place.

Consequently I had no faith in the appointment, the doctor, or the resulting laser procedure appointment. It had not been explained why I needed it.

With a diagram, it took my optometrist less than two minutes to explain what was happening to my eyes, and why it was important for me to have this laser procedure.

Whereas the junior doctor was all over the place frightening me more and more with his complicated explanations, and also of what could go wrong with the laser procedure...

So, I will be going to this laser procedure.

Thank you for all your comments and love.
Take care x