Figure sketch

Blip and diabetes.

I met my friend today. It was quite a hot day. Our usual eating place was full, and so we chose another but the food was worse than awful. The place was so empty that we could sit and talk as long as we wanted over after dinner coffee. So that was a silver lining to that cloud.

I told my friend, I was going to find another place to eat , and accidentally on the way home I did. I checked it out online and I'm about to tell her in a bit.

The main thing is, I was interested in was what my friend had for a cataract post operative checkup after her operation. She said before that she had had one for each eye, (she had both eyes done) but she never told me what it entailed.

She finished telling me , and I said, but what about the post operative check up? You never told me about that again. By the way, my friend is not on the Internet so she doesn't look up things, et cetera.

But I did, she said.

Nowhere in your description of what happened did you say anything about the post operative cataract checkup, I said.

But I did said my friend, the optician said my eyes were fine..

And how did the optician determine your eyes were fine I asked.

Well she gave me an eye test, said my friend.

That is not a post-operative cataract eye checkup, I told my friend. And I showed my friend the NHS site which told you what happened at a cataract post operative eye check.

Oh, none of that happened said my friend.


So I asked my friend to be patient with me and go through the whole thing from beginning to end from when the optician told her they were going to refer her for a cataract operation. She was getting a bit fed up with me at this time, but I wanted to understand....there was something that bothered me and I didn't know what it was, however, my friend asked me some questions of various bits she didn't understand and I was able to explain to her. So, I don't think she minded in the end.

It turned out that when my friend initially had an eye test, when the optician said she both eyes had cataracts and they were going to refer her, they only referred her for one eye at a time because they got money for each separate referral but not so if they referred you for both eyes at once. Fair enough... but the next bit I wasn't happy with...
At that same first visit, the optician had said that my friend had to pay for the glasses she was going to need for after the cataract operation, and told her to choose some frames. The optician told my friend this before she had had the cataract operation, that after the cataract operation, that she was going to need reading glasses and also driving glasses. So my friend had to pay on that first visit for those two pairs of glasses. My friend did tell me at the time, but it didn't make sense to me...

I think that is incredibly sharp practice by the opticians. What do you think?

I am coming to believe that it is more widespread than anyone realises, that the opticians are not doing the postop cataract checks. The opticians are sent all the paperwork from the hospital about your operation so they can conduct the check..

What do you think?


Creative... finger sketch on my phone of a man walking. He had a very stiff% leaning backwards type of stance.

Night night