MonoMonday MM176

Thanks to Dollykgray for taking on the MM hosting this month. She's suggested that we explain our blip names if they're in any way obscure - or if they're obvious, then to say a bit about ourselves.

Well my blip name of "davidc" is a bit obvious - when I joined blip I didn't realise that lots of blippers used fun names. I've wondered about changing it but worry that it might cause confusion. I think I'd change it to "eyesee", having spent 35 years of my life as an eye surgeon until I retired nearly 4 years ago. So I made eyes see and now I'm using my eyes to see what to photograph! It was a wonderful job to do - usually frantically busy (isn't everyone busy in the NHS?) but I liked the mix of interacting with lovely people (patients and colleagues) in clinic and the intricacy and challenges of microsurgery. To be able to save or restore someone's sight was a privilege, and very rewarding; not so rewarding were those occasions when one couldn't put things right however hard one tried - but even then there was the opportunity to put the wheels in motion to help folks to cope.

Towards the end of my career I did a lot of work with the Royal College of Ophthalmologists on the education of new eye surgeons, particularly leading the team which devised an updated training curriculum. That was fun too.

I still go to some ophthalmic meetings as I'm still interested to keep up to date - indeed I'm off to another one (in Chester) on Wednesday.

I'd always been interested in photography, which seemed to tie in neatly with my work. Now I've more time to experiment and to try to produce all sorts of different types of images (especially fun ones!). And of course to share images with fellow blippers, and to share our life events too, is the icing on the cake of this hobby.

Whoops, nearly forgot to explain the picture! This is a little model surgeon given to me as a present many years ago, near the start of my career. It's only about 5cm tall. I think he's rather cute.