Trial 2 - More eyes...sorry.

Had my lovely brother-in-law, Billy, and his partner round for lunch today. Billy prefers to be called William I think but the poor soul will be forever known as Billy. My husband's mother picked three lovely and disparate names names for her children: William, Robert and Elizabeth, but they're known as Billy, Bobby and Betty...which sounds rather like a naff, Seventies children's TV programme!

Billy William and Kevin are good company and H adores my brother-in-law, who has so much patience with him I'm thinking of hiring him as a permanent nanny! Today he kicked a ball around with him *and* played on the Wii *and* began to teach him to play chess. This latter effort has elevated 'Uncle Billy' to God-like status and I will never be able to compete. "Uncle Billy knows loads of interesting stuff..." apparently and is " Seriously cool."

Today's victim ..erm volunteer subject is a 73-year-old, reasonably well-controlled diabetic of 15 years, with cardiovascular issues. The top image is the right eye. You can see, just past 12 o'clock a haemorrhage on the retina. This diabetic retinopathy is related to the length of time the condition has been present. It can be a lot worse than this, with numerous haemorrhages visible. There are some potential issues at around 5 o'clock too, though I'd want to investigate with a higher resolution image and direct observation before committing myself to that one.

The bottom image is taken from the green channel only, because sometimes that makes pathology easier to see. There is more minor retinopathy in the upper left quadrant of the image and also possibly near the centre. However, I converted this to show you how the image highlights the cardiovascular issues of this person. The very dark blood vessel, which extends from the top of the optic nerve head (the pale circular object) is a retinal vein, The lighter-coloured vessel, which crosses it in two places is a retinal artery. As the artery crosses the vein, the vein narrows and kinks. This person has had issues with high blood pressure (hypertension) for many years and this narrowing and kinking is one of the markers we sometimes see...sometimes much more pronounced than this.

I would want to investigate the optic nerve heads of this person a little further too.

The camera is easy to use but tricky to position correctly for a good shot. However, even after a day or so I'm getting more used to handling it.

Edit: Meant to say WHERE have all these bl**dy thunderbugs come from? There are a gazillion, rampaging all over my walls, my arms, my washing on the line and my computer screen!