Eyes Wide Open

At the hospital this morning for the annual Diabetic Retinopathy Scan. Half expected it to have been cancelled due to staff shortages, or appointments like this being included in the current “no visitors” restriction. But all appeared normal and I didn’t see any signs of people rushing around looking stressed. Possibly the situation up here is not as bad as in the city centre hospitals we hear about in the news. You can probably tell from the photograph that our local hospital is set amongst pleasant open countryside, whilst still only being a couple of miles from the town centre, so we consider ourselves quite fortunate in that respect.
The process for the examination basically involves putting in drops to make the pupils as wide as possible and then taking photos of the back of the eye to check for damage. All very painless and only took half an hour.
But the problem is that the pupils remain dilated for a further four hours, which means any sort of bright light is quite painful to the eyes, hence the wearing of the cool shades. It’s also recommended not to drive until eyesight returns to normal, but that wasn’t an issue because the nice weather meant I was happy to walk home. I even detoured via the pharmacy to pick up my prescription. Exercise and drugs - what’s not to like!
A bit more exercise this afternoon as I squeezed in a quick gym session before tea. Pantomime again tonight, and Mrs C is coming along to watch. I’ll do my best to remember all my lines so she gets her moneys worth! We lost one chorus member last night - negative LFT but felt rough so stayed away - so I’ll be interested to see if we’ve lost anyone else or if we’re back up to full strength tonight.