I've been in a few general wards, but I usually sleep through anything that goes on and only find out about it next morning.
I think they are supposed to deflate the balloon before pulling it out ::-0
Colin Bignell
Nasty. I presume it worked out OK, given that you are still here 20 years later.
I've been stockpiling books for months.
Colin Bignell
She has done this and yes it works, but we feel it is somewhat drastic to be permanently blinded in one eye when there is no diagnosis. Once there is a diagnosis, there may or may not be other options. There have been suggestions that it may actually be an ear problem, causing balance problems and interfering with the signals from the eye, but this particular consultant does not seem interested in finding out.
We are particularly reluctant to go the currently suggested surgical route, as we know two people who being already blind in one eye, have suffered accidental eye injuries, one of whom was lucky that he lost his blind eye, the other is now totally blind (from the age of 23). My own father suffered a detached retina and has lost part of his sight in one eye. Eyes are too precious and vulnerable to lightly sacrifice the built in redundancy of having two!
We are currently seeking a second opinion, specifically from the consultant that wanted to investigate further.
SteveW
That is not the sort of treatment I got from the retinal unit. From start to discharge, they were superb. What department was your wife visiting?
Your wife has my sympathy, as a visit to both of our children requires us to drive 35, or 266 miles to see them and I very much doubt that my wife would drive the 266 miles for a second time.
Dave
Our local hospital had problems with outsourcing of its equipment sterilisation and a number of operations had to be cancelled due to visibly dirty equipment. This may have had something to do with the fact that they gave my wife two, possibly three infections in theatre during an emergency ceasarean - they admitted that that was the most likely source of the infections. When she went back a fortnight later, feeling wretched, they told us that had she come in a few hours later, she'd very likely have died. As it was, they had great difficulty in getting antibiotics into her, as her veins had begun to collapse.
I must admit that with the next child they treated her very well, even providing a private room free of charge. Arrangements for equipment sterilisation had been changed by then!
SteveW
Welcome to the poverty trap.
I had a good year a couple or so back, more than 5k up on the previous years, might have *turned over* the national average of 24k or so. How much of that 5k actually ended up as extra money in my pocket? About 1.5k after taking into account tax and the dramatic reduction in Working Tax Credit, don't know why I bothered for a measly 1.5k...
There's an arc reflex from the balance organs to the orbit muscles, which is very easy to demonstrate to yourself. Hold a piece of A4 typed text at arm's length, and you should be able to read it easily with normal vision (corrected if necessary).
Now shake the piece of paper in your hand -- doesn't need to be very fast or more than 1/2" displacement, but you won't be able to read it.
Now, instead of shaking the piece of paper, shake your head. You will find that you can read the paper in this case, even when shaking your head by the equivalent of moving the paper by many inches.
Why the difference between shaking your head and shaking the paper? In the case of shaking the paper, in order to read the paper, your eyes have to track the paper movement. This means detecting than the paper has moved by processing the image in the brain in real-time, and feeding back appropriate movements to the orbit muscles. Our brains can't do this anything like fast enough. In the case of shaking your head, an arc reflex transfers the head movement from the balance organs to the orbit muscles, without going through the brain. This pathway, if it's working, is orders of magnitude faster than the case of shaking the paper and the image processing pathway through the brain. The orbit muscles in each eye are driven by the balance organ on the same side. However, if the balance organs on one side stop generating any signal, after a period of time, the arc reflex gets rewired so both eyes are driven from the balance organ on the other side. Unfortunately, the balance organs can fail in such a way as to generate random data (e.g. Meniere's disease), and in bad cases, the auditory nerve can be surgically cut to prevent this (hearing has already been lost anyway by this point), and then relying on the arc reflex rewiring to the other balance organ.
If you try the paper test with a view to actually checking that arc reflex is intact, test with each eye separately. OTOH, if you think there's any chance of a detached retina, shaking your head is a bad idea.
Get a car with rear-facing seats? :-)
On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:14:16 +0100, "nightjar" So am I., but I'm having a will drawn up, just in case.
Dunno how old you are Colin. I remember the Beatles at Shea Stadium being on the news when I was a kid, and all their singles, as well as "one small step for man". Touch wood I've been healthy so far but I'm aware the odds get stacked higher by the year. All the best with whatever op you go for/can get.
I once had to go from Preston, Lancs. to Portsmouth by Virgin trains. I booked well in advance one way, as I was bringing our son's car back North. I chose a forward looking seat.
The train arrived at Birmingham New Street to the usual dismal lighting and after a short engineering delay, we pulled out backwards. The train terminated at Reading, still going backwards and we all had to get off and make for a train to take us to another station in which we travelled backwards again, where we had to get off again to get a train to Portsmouth. I think we travelled forwards on this one.
Not only do Virgin trians not go all the way, like their namesake, but it was the next day before my eyes got used to not travelling backwards.
So I can't recomend a backward facing seat :-((
Dave
I remember trams in London.
My problem is a birth defect. It has just taken a while to be detected :-)
Thank you
Colin Bignell
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