Two visits to the RAH today. One for the dentist, the other for the eye doctor.
The dentist was routine. A scrape/clean of the teeth. Only a bit of minor pain as the dentist cleaned the calculus off my teeth. Some very minor irritation around the gums due to inadequate brushing and bad brushing technique. So I need to change my brushing technique to keep the teeth and gums nice and clean.
I went to the eye doctor as I have had watery eyes and some slightly blurred vision. The eye doctor checked my eyes for various things but it appears that the steroids and diabetes have not caused any problems for my eyes in terms of vision etc. The watery eyes were a slightly different story. First of all a little bit of anaesthetic was put in my eyes. This was followed by a needle into the tear duct or path where tears drain into the nose/back of the throat. When I saw him get it out I thought that it was an interesting device and I hope he is not going to use that on me. From memory it looked something like this:
Of course he did use it. I got it in both eyes so to speak, actually it is in the corner of the eye socket near the nose. The first eye was OK, I coped with that. He attempted to flush some saline solution through. What I should have noticed if all was OK was a taste of salt in the back of my throat. Instead of that the saline solution came back out my eye. The second eye was OK too until he wiggled it a little bit to see if he could clear it out. As usual I started to feel faint etc. He took it out and was starting to get ready for a second go when I mentioned that I ‘did not feel too good’. Fortunately he had done enough because I was ready to pass out a few minutes later. I only just stopped myself from having a chunder too. The prognosis – my tear ducts drainage systems are blocked and the tears make my eyes appear all watery as they cannot drain away as usual. Sometimes it looks like I am crying, especially when I am eating. Apparently it does not cause any long term damage to the eye. Surgery can be used to fix it but the waiting list is over a year long. I will put up with for a while, hopefully all will be OK.
Looking back I don’t know how I sat there and took a needle in the eye like that. I wonder if some people ‘freak out’?