MCL and Me

On Tuesday I went to the late evening clinic at the eye hospital having been referred by my optician because my pressures were a bit high. I got my long suffering taxi driver Dad to take me in case I had my pupils dilated and couldn't drive back. We arrived early and it was pretty busy. My appointment was for 18:45 and I was seen about 19:30 I think. They were short staffed apparently. The doc I saw did the usual eye exam checks with the big light and called a colleague to come in to take a look at my map-dot-fingerprint dystrophy caused by my dry eye syndrome as he thought the colleague would like to see it. The doc then recommended I start using the night cream lacrilube again and told me to come back in six months. At which point I gently reminded him I'd been referred for abnormal pressures and could he check them. I guess he'd had a long day. Anyway the good news is that my pressures are fine and I will go back in six months for a general check. The checks they do i...

Sorry for the bit of an intermission on my blog. Of course in one sense it means nothing exciting is going on medically which is a good thing but I really should try and manage at least one update a week. I will try harder. My excuse, such as it is, is that last week I was working Wednesday to Friday doing a disaster recovery test at Hewlett Packard's (HP) recovery centre in Rugby. This is where we pretend some of our systems have exploded and we go down and try and recover them using just the backup tapes onto new equipment provided by HP. These are relatively intense sessions albeit with some periods of inactivity whilst we wait for the data to be recovered from the tapes. This along with travelling to and from Rugby for three days meant I was really tired by the end of each day. More so than usual. You'll be pleased to know, however, we recovered the systems successfully even if the client never turned up to test them. In other news I finally got my eye hospital referral sor...

Well I finally got the automated system at City Hospital to understand me when I encountered it again today. When it says "Did you mean Eye Centre or Eye Department at City?" you have to say "Eye Centre" again not say "Yes". Not really intuitive particularly given the way the inflection is on the sentence. After that, when I got through, my referral from Vision Express is still not on the system despite supposedly having been posted two weeks ago and faxed 3 days ago. The woman at the eye centre said give until Friday and if not on the system by then get Vision Express to fax it again and she will walk it through the system. Meanwhile a non-medical item. Irrational Pleasures There are some things in life that give you far more pleasure than they really ought. Disproportionate to the significance of the item or act. I refer to these as irrational pleasures. As you will see below I have currently deprived myself of one my specific irrational pleasures and t...

Well another week has flown by, such a trite saying I know but I feel the need to say it somehow. Quick recap on the week's events: The 20/20 Cricket on Sunday 28th June with Dad was a great day out. The weather held and there was an exciting last ball win for Warwickshire. The week at work has been its usual intense mix of tasks. I made it in the to office on Tuesday and Thursday, as is becoming my routine now. Whether I shall have to retreat to my bunker next month when Swine Flu takes a real hold or not remains to be seen. I chased the eye hospital about my referral from the opticians from the 25th June and it was there I encountered City Hospital's wonderful voice recognition system. "Please state the name of the department or person you wish to contact". I said "Eye Centre" not expecting that to work at all, but low and behold back came the response "Did you say Eye Centre?" but then despite three attempts it could not understand me saying the...