Eye see, or perhaps not.

I have Phil for company today as he's got an appointment with the eye specialist this afternoon after his last visit to his optician earned him a referral to the hospital because the pressures in his eyes was just above the normal limit. I need to play taxi for him as some of the tests they may do could render him temporarily blind and he wouldn't be able to drive himself home, so we head out around lunch time to leave plenty of time for arrival as we didn't really know what the roads and traffic would be like.

When we arrive at the hospital we have to wait around for a while, but Phil eventually gets taken in for a quick eye test and then another wait later he is called in to see the specialist. Now, I wasn't in the room but Phil tells me afterwards that the woman he'd seen had told him that his eyes were in the most terrible state and he was suffering from a bad case of Corneal Neovascularization due to the type of contacts he was wearing. Nothing wrong with the pressures, but he was about to go blind because he'd been stupid enough to take the advice of an optician who had prescribed 30 day continuous use contacts, something that only people with 3 fingers and no opposable thumb should be allowed to use. The remedy? No more contacts for a month, and if he does go back to them he has to use daily ones instead.

So, we've got two extreme opinions here, Boots say "use the contacts for 30 days, after all they're approved by the governmental health authority to sell over here and we check your eyes every 6 months and haven't noticed this particular problem with your eyes, plus we don't really want you to stop paying us £16 quid a month". The Doctor says "Contacts are the spawn of the devil. You are either too stupid or incapable of changing them daily. Begone!!".

As you can imagine this has left Phil a bit shell-shocked. It took him ages to get the hang of contacts and now as he's reaping the rewards for all his hard work someone either wants to take the prize completely away or leave him play with it even though his eyes might drop out. So, we decided to go and see our doctor who recommended we get an opinion from an optician who has a special interest in contacts, and if that doesn't work go private to seek a second opinion.

Phil and I both think that there is a middle ground to be had here, it's just a case of finding it and perhaps rendering the services of a more experienced eye care professional regularly to keep those capillaries at bay.

So, can you guess what my mission is for tomorrow?

Posted by Abi on the January 14, 2010 9:29 PM