Thatās the key question with Slaintecare will it make things any better or will those of us who can afford private care still be able to access care quicker. Anyway good news that your oul fella doesnāt have to wait 6 or 12 months.
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Sure no wonder itās always ringing in the Dail chamber
- .75.
Donāt need glasses but I picked up a free pair anyway through VHI
Got new glasses today. Last ones broke. Was able to stick them with superglue but sure as thereās shite on a goose (cc @anon67715551) theyād go again at a time of maximum inconvenience to me.
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Iāll have to remember that one. My auld ladās line was āas sure as your hole is looking down to the groundā. The context was usually one of us getting chastised for having done something wrong.
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Itās actually āas sure as thereās shite IN a gooseā.
Feel free to use as suitable.
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He should have gone to specsavers
Iāve multiple pairs of glasses but the ones Iām currently using are the finest. Iāve recently acquired a little set of screwdrivers specifically for tightening small bastards of screws. Iāve tightened up about 5 pairs and am quite chuffed with the results.
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Thatās actually what I meant to say. Fucking autocorrect 
Jewellery screwdrivers as they are known in the trade.
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Or if itās a threat used in future tense itās āwhile your hole looks down on the groundā 
Isnāt it a sad state of affairsā¦?
For anybody interested, this is what you see on a normal OCT scan. This is a scan of the macula, the small central part of your retina that controls your central vision. The macula measures about 5mm in diameter, itās like a circle on the retina. The valley like hollow in this picture is the foveal pit. Thatās the centre of the macula. This is what controls your fine central vision.
I used to imagine the retina was like a small, fine piece of ribbon. Itās not like that at all. If you imagine the back of the eye as a tennis ball cut in half, the retina is a bit like the inner lining, except itās layered and is said to have the consistency of wet toilet paper. If you get a tear, it can progress to a detachment, which is often compared to wallpaper detaching from a wall. You can put the wallpaper back, but itās almost impossible to put it back in the exact same place. The more that detaches, the worse the detachment is.
There are 10 layers in the retina. The retinal pigment epithelium is what provides oxygen and nutrients to the retina. When you get a retinal detachment, the retina separates from the retinal pigment epithelium. If youāre āluckyā, itāll only happen at the periphery of the retina, and not detach the macula. I wasnāt so lucky. Though if you look at my OCT scan, it still looks pretty like this, so maybe as macular detachments go it wasnāt too bad. Itās just there are likely micro disruptions which I have to hope even themselves out over time, there are micro disruptions to the retinal pigment epithelium apparently.
The sclera is the very outside of your eyeball. The black stuff at the top is your vitreous humour, which I think has a consistency like weak jelly, which makes up the majority of the eyeball.
What caused my retinal detachment was a thing called a posterior vitreous detachment. This is an excellent video explaining how it happens.
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This is the young lady who lost the sight in one of her eyes in a vicious attack in Ballyfermot at the end of 2021. Much as I admire her attitude, I donāt have the same attitude, and part of me thinks the fuckers who did this to her should have it done to them as punishment, literally an eye for an eye, because they ruined her life for kicks.
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Totally agree. Absolutely horrific thing to do to a young lady or anyone really.
Welcome to my world. Thatās as close as I can bring the two sets of posts at the Hill 16 end together.
In this photograph, Kilmacud Crokes have 34 players.
I went for an eye test today because I saw a small floater (literally one tiny black dot, like a dust particle) in my left eye yesterday, the same eye that has caused me all the trouble. Thereās no problem with the floater apparently, which is good.
Whatās not so good is I have a yokey called an epiretinal membrane which is growing on my retina. Itās bigger than previously and has spread to a different part of the retina, the far side of the foveal pit. The optician was categorical that my distortion (see above) is being caused by this epiretinal membrane (Iām not sure about this, it could be the whole cause, it might not be any of the cause, it might be a partial contributor).
This here is not todayās scan - itās a scan of my macula (which is supposed to give you crisp, clear central vision) from exactly two months ago, January 25th - but to give you an idea of what I saw today, the ridges on the surface of the retina to the left of that valley thing have now spread to the right hand side of it, which was previously smooth. The valley yoke is the foveal pit, the very centre of your macula.
What I found very depressing was the optician told me there isnāt a surgeon in Ireland who will operate to remove the epiretinal membrane, as my visual acuity is too āgoodā, and that Iād have to live with the distortion. This ānewsā is not at all a surprise to me, it is something Iād guessed would be the case, but it is horrific and depressing.
This is not something Iām considering living with for very long, so I went to Woodies afterwards and bought the same product Iād looked at last week but not bought then. I saw a short clip of the hurling on the news earlier and Jesus fucking Christ, the posts were like chopsticks broken in 20 places. This is why I no longer watch much sport on telly. I went for a walk past the pitches at Dangan yesterday and by chance there was what looked like a schools hurling match on. I decided to look on from āthe bankā for a minute or two and had to quickly move on, my eyesight was a mess.
The problem is good quantitative visual acuity (ie. 20/20, and quantitatively my shit eye is somewhere not too far away from that) can actually be horrendous eyesight in qualitative terms, and surgeons will reason there is too much to āloseā because they only deal in quantitative visual acuity.
But my view is I have nothing at all to lose by getting this membrane removed. If left untreated will likely worsen anyway and mess up my quantitative visual acuity further. And my qualitative vision is already horrendous.
This guy supports early intervention to remove epiretinal membranes. Colin McCannel is his name and heās a vitreo-retinal surgeon at the Stein Eye Institute at UCLA. I wonder if heād lend me an ear if I wrote to him.
You have absolutely nothing to lose if you write to that surgeon. Give it a go.
Would you not at least try a patch over the bad eye for a few weeks. Apologies if you have done this already but I canāt recall if you have done it for an extended period of time.
You have too much to do and too much to miss out on in life if you pack it all
In due to the current difficulties you have. Keep fighting and hopefully you can figure out a way past this.
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Your poor mum sid, how does she figure in your plans? Could you put a bit of your energy to doing something positive for her?
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