Well its that time again when I have to pop into the local hospital for a check-up on my Vampiric eye syndrome. Only today’s appointment was not at my usual first thing in the morning time, but at the unhelpful time of 11am. Now this is both a bonus (I can work from home for a while before having to go for appointment, which means less time spent in the office) and a hindrance (If you’re not there early enough in the day, then parking is next to impossible.).

I arrive at the hospital in plenty of time and try and park in the car-park near the eye outpatients, No Room, So I try the several staff car parks close to that end of the hospital (I may, or may not have acquired a staff parking permit for my car) No Room. OK, so there is a car-park half way along the hospital complex, No Room. The staff car-park near the middle of the complex? No Room. The huge main car-park at the other end of the hospital to where I need to be? No Room. The overflow massive car-park that’s been built on the far end of the main car-park? No Room.  At this point I would have happily parked on a manger in a stable!. Right there is a bit of wasteland at the end of the overflow car-park where people park if there is no where else left? No Room!! At this point I remember I’m driving a 4×4 and park it “off road”

Its Raining, and I have approximately a 3/4 mile walk through the various car-parks to get to the hospital, and then a 1/2 mile walk to get to the opposite side of the hospital where my appointment is in  18 minutes! Did I mention its raining?

So I get into the eye outpatients slightly bedraggled from the rain, and out of breath from the speed walking. I report to the receptionist who disappointedly is not the cute friendly one who always remembers my name, but some other one. I explain I have an appointment, confirm my address to prove who I am and get asked :-

Receptionist: “Have you moved house since you were last here?“

WO: “err no! I just confirmed my address to you?“

Receptionist: “Have you changed surgery or doctors since you were last here?“

WO: “err no! I would have informed you, I just want my appointment! please can I sit down“

Receptionist: “Its sometimes like you live here isnt it?“

WO: “err yes” *smiles disarmingly as I back slowly away without making any sudden movements to a seat*

The waiting game begins, So I start writing a blog post about an update to my Vampiric eye syndrome, not this blog post, oh no. I wrote a post of several hundred words, using the wordpress iPhone App, and saved it to “local drafts” only for it to vanish into the void. I then get called for an eye test before moving to another waiting area to wait to see the actual doctor.

I should point out stupidity of the eye test station. You go in and read the letters off the board for them to measure your eye sight level. Only you are there due to some eye problem, Myself I’m on eye drops that tend to dilute eye and make everything fuzzy, so have yet to go into eye test room when I could see the board with the drop affected eye. I also have them confused as there are two identical test rooms, with identical eye charts, Yet if I am in the right hand room I can see several lines further down the chart than I can in the left hand room.

So I make it to the final waiting room, and boy does this room live up to its name, and then some! I was here for over an hour. It’s not their fault really, the eye outpatient department is the busiest department in the hospital (Well maybe apart from A&E on a Saturday night) So the place is always packed to capacity. Then you have the fact they have a special infectious eye clinic on the second Wednesday of the month (to add even more people to the overcrowdedness) And to top it all off today, they were a Doctor down, and then a second Doctor was called out to an emergency, meaning the remaining Doctors had to see their patients as well as the missing Doctors patients.  So this meant I had an hours wait, and there was no WiFi available for me to use, and no phone signal.

So, to recap, I had a stupidly long walk through the rain to get here, I’ve been waiting bored out my head for about an hour and a half in total. And how long am I in with the Doc for? FIVE MINUTES! Long enough to say Hi, her to check my eye, declare its looking good, and lower my drops, and say she will see me in two months.

I hate Hospitals!!!!!!!

This morning I had a “Quick” 9am appointment at the local hospital for a cursory check that my recent Vampiric eye illness was fully cleared and all doing ok.

That was the plan, but we all know what they say of the best laid plans, and how they often “Gang aft agley,”

So here I sit, drained dry of blood, with a bruised arm, after hours of tests. I believe they have decided to run every test they could think off, including some I think they made up on the spot to try and track down the actual cause of my Vampiric Eye Syndrome.

Ah, your probably now sitting there thinking . o {Come on? drained of blood? Don’t be so melodramatic!}. Well I was sat in the blood letting chair for quite a while, and every other time in my life I have had blood tests they have taken two tubes of blood. Today they took what looked to be a dozen, Even the blood letter was shocked at the amount of tests being run. Put it this way, when they finally found a vein and started the blood collecting it was squirting quite strongly into the tube, by the time they got to the last tube it was barley a trickle coming out, and she had to keep forcing needle in deeper, and moving it about.

After I was drained of blood I was passed on to the X-ray department, Which was an interesting experience since my last x-ray was on my knee when I was about nine months old. I’m not sure I will be allowed back after I caused slight upset amongst the staff by suggesting they use the machines to peak into Xmas gifts to see what they are. There was also a case of roving hands, but I was polite and endured it.

So now, I get two weeks to recover from these tests before going back and getting the results.

I got back to the Ninja Temple last night to find an envelope waiting for me containing a copy of “Butterfly Tai Chi“. I had been wanting to watch this since I first saw the clips/info about it when it was being filmed. I should point out I have a slight background in BaGua, and have been interested in the concept of TaiChi for a while now.  Since I have been meaning to get into it for a while, I was interested in the Butterfly TaiChi with its advertised “Take just twenty minutes out of your day to practice the seven simple elegant movements of Butterfly Tai Chi you will feel healthier happier and more energised“. Twenty minutes a day? I can find time for that, especially it it does not require much floor space.

I watched the DVD last night, It comes in three parts 1)A Warm-up, 2)The Basic Set, & 3) Advanced set. The techniques are simple to follow, and the instructor explains the moves well including any health benefits. Unlike some other DVD’s I have seen in this area the moves were explained simply for people without any previous training, and instructions were given on how to adapt the moves while you are learning, and that its better to get the feeling right than exactly mimic the instructor on the screen. Overall the feeling from watching the DVD was almost like having a one on one session with a trainer in a friendly atmosphere than a more technical manual of what you should be doing.

I did not try out the moves (err something to do with beer in the temple fridge) but I am looking forward to planning to set aside some time to start following the system. And I’ll post a practitioners review after I’ve spent a while trying the moves.

For those interested in more information on Butterfly Tai Chi, you can visit the website at http://butterflytaichi.co.uk/

This Christmas I was afflicted with “Vampiric Eye” again (Or iritis for those of you who like medical terms). Now there is nothing special about this, other than I am getting slowly fed up of the repeated outbreaks, and there will be vengeance on whatever is the cause (And there may be a new clue).

I only mention this outbreak now as I am reminded of the great “Bedside Manner” of the Doctors who treated me in A&E, and the great way they put my mind at rest, and alleviated worry.

I turned up at A&E since the eye outpatients was closed over the Christmas holidays. I signed myself in and waited upon Triage, I should have been tipped off it was not going to be a good day when I got Triaged twice by two different nurses. Eventually I made it into the examining rooms and was seen by a young Doctor, who was confused by the state of my eye, and just kept muttering to himself (Possibly a curse to ward off the evil eye?). After a while, he asks me to wait while he goes to find a senior Doctor since he admits to being clueless.

The Senior Doctor working in the A&E comes to see me, He looks at my eye and starts muttering to himself. He then calls the junior one over and they start talking to themselves.. “Have you seen the shape of the eye? why is it that shape?“, “Have you ever seen one bulging like that? its all swollen“, “Wow, its like the inside is all full of gray puss“. All the while I am sat there, in earshot, in pain, and getting worried.

The senior Doc returns to me and says with full confidence. “Could you go back and wait in the waiting room please, we don’t know whats going on so we are calling an eye specialist to come in to the hospital to look at you!“.   Great, its Xmas time, and a Doctor is being phoned up at home, to travel through the snow to the local hospital to look at me, I sense painful eye prodding & drops in my future.

My eye is 90% fine as of Wednesday, So I feel I can poke fun at the events involved.

My case of “Vampire Eye” was not getting any better, in fact it seemed to be getting actually worse, so yesterday I decided to get myself a check-up appointment at the Doctors. I was in luck and managed to get myself a 9am appointment.  So not long to wait to get some answers…..right?

9:00 AM Doctor 1:

I’m sat patiently in the waiting room, and by patiently I mean board out of my mind and playing “angry birds” to waste the time. You have to love appointment times, I had a fixed time 9am, I was the first appointment of day, and I still had to wait about twenty minutes before getting seen.

I get in to see the Doc, (Not The Doc, which is a shame cos that would have been really cool), anyway I walk in and sit down. My Doctor looks at me

Doc: “err so the drops I gave you are not helping?“

WO: “No, and my eyes been getting worse the last three days?“

Doc: “err, well I don’t really know much about eyes. But one of the other doctors here is an eye man, he used to be work at the eye clinic, and he really knows his stuff. I’ll make you an appointment to see him.“

WO: . o (WTF? I come in repeatedly with an EYE problem, I keep seeing you who knows nothing about eyes, and you guys had an eye doctor here all the time?) “Cool.“

A new appointment is made with a new doctor for 4pm.

4:00 PM Doctor 2:

I turn up and wait, and wait, I then spot a doctor coming out the room I know is the one I have the appointment in. He walks over to receptionist and hands over a pile of medical notes/records then leaves the building. I just look about wondering if no one told him about the extra person he had to see at the end of the day.  I was just planning how to kidnap him in the car park when he came back in.

Now this doctor actually checked my eye, asked me questions, inserted a variety of bits of cardboard and paper into my eye to check things, and various other things. This beat my previous doctors method of going. “oh, you have a blood shot eye, conjunctivitis, take these drops!” He humms, and asks do I mind waiting back in the waiting room for a bit while he phones the eye-clinic. So I wait but I should get some answers……right?

After an hour in and out of the doctors office, I was asked did I mind rushing myself to A&E ASAP, do not pass go & do not collect $200. Well OK, that sounds bad, but the Hospital should give me some answers…..right?

So I shot off to the Hospital with a letter from the Doctor.

5:30 PM Hospital:

I arrive at A&E and give my name and address. The receptionist asks what the issue is, so I hand over my note from my doctor. She opens it and looks at page, turns it over and looks at back, turns it over and looks at the front, and then again the back. She puts it back into the envelope and asks “err so what’s the issue?“. I tell here dodgy eye and she sends me to another waiting room to wait for the triage nurse.

I get called up and sent into a small examination room. The triage nurse and another nurse come in with me and ask what seems to be the problem. Once again I hand over my note and the two of them look at the front, then the back, then the front, then the back. “err ok, I got about 4 words that I could read” says one, “I got part of his DOB” the other one adds. I get the note back and place it safely in my pocket to show my mother at some later date to prove my handwriting on the whole is not that bad.

Before we start I am given a form thing I have to fill in on abuse, bullying, etc. Questions like is anyone in your family physically abusing you, mentally abusing you, etc.  And what would you do if someone tried abusing you. I helpfully point out they missing the option “I’d rip out their spleen and wear it as a hat” and the two nurses back out of the room informing me someone will be along soon.

The waiting continues, and continues. The triage nurse pops into the room “Has anyone seen you yet?” “no” “good!” and pops out leaving me shall we say a tad bit confused. Luckily she popped back in to explain that they had got a phone call from one of the doctors from the eye clinic asking was I there, and not to see me because they were coming up to see me.

After a short wait I hear a Russian accent ask “where is he?” and a rather attractive, tall blonde woman in street clothes is standing by entrance to room.  The triage nurse walks up to her and points at me, then adds that there is a three year old in A&E with grit in his eye, and they would like her to have quick look at the kid. “No! I am here for him” *slaps paperwork in her hand* “Only Him!“. Woooooo Hoooooooo I think.

So I get examined, she curses loudly in her lovely accent that my doctors are all fools for diagnosing conjunctivitis all the times and giving me anti-biotics’.  She informs me that I have in fact got Iriitis, I will have drops to take for next 3 days, and I will see her again on Monday. (Score). It was at this point the nurses explained that pharmacy was closed for the night, so I would not be able to have prescription until the morning.

She looked at me, “One minute” and left the room. From down the corridor I could hear her accent as she informed the A&E doctors and nurses that I would have my prescribed medication tonight, even if one of them had to hand  write a prescription and run to the nearest Boots that was open and pick me some up. She walked back into the room to inform me with a smile “you will have your drugs!”

I have to hand it to the A&E staff, they managed to scrounge up enough bits from different places to cover me until the morning when I would be able to come back to get full prescription filled.

Yesterday I gave in to the masses, who had been giving me a hard time for not going to the doctor with my “Vampire Eye“.

So I woke up yesterday, got dressed up in my Ninja Gi, loaded up with all the weapons and tools of the Ninja, and prepared for the dangerous, and arduous task that is trying to book an appointment at my medical centre. And was I in for a surprise.

I get ready with the house phone, my mobile, & a scripted PBX to attempt the impossible first step, actually getting hold of someone. I dial and……. I get an automated welcome message, welcoming me to the medical centre, informing me my call may be recorded for training purposes and telling me i shall have options to pick from.  WOW. My Doctors place has got themselves a decent phone system that’s not some old woman sat at a desk moving wires about.

I then get to the menu system of the phone call. “Press one for…..” there then followed a huge list of all the possible reasons you may press option one. Then SILENCE, I waited, and waited, but still there was silence. “OK? so the first part of the menu is press 1 or press 1” I pressed 1, and the phone started ringing and I got a real person.  Yes their automated phone messaging system goes. Press 1 and get person. They have managed to add a pointless step in the process of PHONE-RINGS->ANSWER-PHONE.

I get my appointment and dutifully turn up at the surgery on time. Only its all different, its bigger, better, and different. In fact its like they had built a huge new building next to the original, then knocked down the original to make additional car parking spaces. Well the old place had been there for dozens of years, and was a bit small and dingy.

I enter the posh new building to be greeted by a large wall mounted flat screen TV with the word “Welcome” on it in a button like box. I then touched the button on the screen like you do, it changed to two buttons [Male] & [Female] “Wow, they really gone to town on making the patients feel comfortable while waiting, they even supply company for you“. I quickly pressed the [Female] button, it now asked for a D.O.B. “wow. I wonder if they ask for my preferred hair colour and such?”  I hit a few random options for a birth date, and waited for my order to arrive.

The screen in front of me said “Welcome Mrs ***** ****** ******, please take a seat in the waiting area.” *SHIT* its a login system, not a online ordering thing. I hit reset, and put my details in, and made my way to sit innocently in the waiting room. Where there was an even bigger flat screen TV informing me that “smoking is bad” “unsafe sex is bad” “yada yada yada” and occasional beeping and telling someone they should go to room **.  Modern technology is great, instead of the old yellowing posters telling me everything fun is bad for me, they now get to do it in wide screen, high definition.

After all that, the Doc told me nothing I didn’t already know, and I was in with him for about 3 minutes. This is why I never bother going to see the Doctor.

OK, Before I get onto writing this post I feel I should point out that I am not 100% convinced suicide is the correct term for the title.  Now I am not a student of Latin, in fact the closest I have ever come to studying the language is lying with my head in the lap of a girl who was practicing for her Latin Oral.  But that’s another story for another time.

Now, I know the ****cide words for different kids of killings are made up from two parts. the ending cide from the Latin Caedere, Cecidi meaning Killing.  And the first part depicts the kind of thing being killed. for eg:-

• regicide: killing of a king/Queen
• homicide: killing of a human
• parricide: killing  of a parent
• fratricide: killing of a brother
• sororicide: killing of a sister
• uxoricide: killing of a wife
• mariticide: killing of a husband
• herbicide: Killing Plants
• suicide: Killing of yourself

Now the best i can work out the word i really needed to use would be genesuicide which i may just have made up now, and only people who know the meaning of the three parts of the word would have been able to work out what on earth I was trying to say. So for now I will settle for suicide, Unless anyone can correct me.

Now to the Post… *Random Dramatic Music*

I have been ill the last few days, some form of flu (not of the aporckalypse kind) yet still a very nasty one. Lets just say I crawled into bed around 9pm Sunday, and apart from trips to hug the toilet I did not crawl back out until some point Tuesday evening.  Now during this extended stay in bed, I did start hallucinating slightly.  This is the only the second time I remember being so ill that I hallucinated, the previous time it was with some very strong 48 hour debilitating flu as well. So maybe the same strain?

The previous hallucinations of several years ago involved some microscopic aliens with a odd fetish for saucepans. Apparently “so they informed me” the common saucepan is the greatest invention of all time, you can cook with it, eat from it, drink from it, carry stuff (both liquid and solid) in it, Use it to paddle, bail out, dig, as a rudimentary trap for small animals, and even as a weapon. I was tempted at the time to argue for the validity of other inventions possibly in the medical or gaming areas as a better invention to worship, but when you are convinced your bed is full of microscopic aliens armed with saucepans you tend just to agree with them and pray you get better soon.  Anyway that’s a different story.

This time the hallucinations were mainly auditory, it sounded like thousands of me’s were all talking in my head. and each was different in a slight way. As if every me from the multiverse had all been pulled into the same place at the same time, so each of their thoughts could be heard by all the others. Do you realise how impossible it is to sleep with hundreds of voices arguing, crying, moaning loudly in your head at the same time? It did not make it better that one of the voices could not cope, so kept singing one verse from the song Puss in boots over and over again to drown out the sound of the others.

Pussycat, pussycat where have you been?
I’ve been to London, now I’m queen
Sitting pretty, I don’t wear suits
And the mice all call me –
Puss’n boots

Puss’n Boots By Adam & The Ants

Over and over and over solidly for over ten hours. I tell you, I was getting close to giving up until I noticed the volume of voices were getting less and less over time, like there was less me’s about.  Now I’d like to think this was my body’s reaction to getting better, that it was natural progressions.  The only thing stopping me believe that is the fact that as the number of other me’s dropped the voice of my subconscious got happier and happier.

I believe I mentioned how all the multiverses version of me had slightly different qualities? well out of the hundreds that were in my hallucination, only my subconscious was a sociopath.

Luckily it was all just a Hallucination.  Wasn’t it?

I am suffering from the medical condition “Vampire Eyes” again. “What is Vampire Eye?“ you ask, Well you should read some of the earlier blog posts where its mentioned in detail.  OK! I’m nice, I’ll  give a quick re-cap for the newer readers.

VAMPIRE EYES:

A weird eye infection that causes the eye infected to glow red, be extremely sensitive to sunlight, spend all day trying to close, and all night trying to open.

That’s probably not the correct medical term, Its just the one I am using until someone can give me the correct term.  And No one has yet identified the illness. So there I am next best thing to blind and not liking it at all, so I play the lottery of seeing a doctor.  You see, to get an appointment with my doctor you must phone up in a very short window of time the morning you would like the appointment.  Now there is only one phone number, one person answering, for an area covering six or more villages (One being the largest village in Wales). So the phone line is constantly engaged.  Today I was lucky. I got me an appointment at 9:30 with a new doctor.

So at 9:15 I pull into the car park of the doctors place only to find it full, as is the library car park next to it, a quick zoom around all the neighbouring car parks left me abandoning my car on the side of the road. (Err YES! the brighter of you lot may have just asked out loud, “You Drove? You said you was blind!” its a skill driving purely by using the power of the force!)  Anyway, I make it into the Doctors Surgery for 9:25 and state my name, appointment time and details to the receptionist who proceeds to give me a number attached to a big coloured bit of plastic. “A Number? I have an appointment at a set time, i had to fight using multiple phone lines to get it, and I am reduced to a number, just like in the pre-appointment times!” So I sit down with my number (5) a quick check at current number (2) means I have a bit of a wait…

*BUZZ* *BUZZ* The light next to my Doctors name is flashing, its not my turn as I am several numbers down the list.  Now some old lady with a lower number than me looks at the other old dear next to her and goes “That’s you dear, your the next number!” for the other woman to reply “No, I’m a different doctor” They then get into a small argument over what doctor they are seeing as they both have the same coloured bit of plastic (each doctor having a different colour). This argument them covers the whole room as its discovered everyone in the waiting room has the same coloured bits of plastic yet are waiting on four different doctors.  After a bit more arguing and more buzzing from the doctor the least able bodied person in the room stumbles her way to the receptionist on her two walking sticks.  It turns out the receptionist was having an insane morning and gave everyone the same colour. So we are all given the correct colour, and I see an opportunity as I now have a card for the most popular doctor with a number lower than most the people waiting to see him. So I try to sell my lower number, Alas I failed to get any bids and the card was taken off my be a nurse.

On another bonus, my new doctor is a rather attractive young lady so i may need to fabricate a few more illnesses.

It made for an entertaining morning.

I finally gave in to peer pressure, and went to see the doctor about my eye.  So a quick in/out to get it confirmed I have conjunctivitis and need eye drops, get a prescription, and sorted, all under 10 minutes. God bless the NHS!

So I’m standing outside the door to the doctors, prescription in hand with a decision to make. Do I: –

1. Go to my normal Chemists (When I say normal, I’d not been there in 20 odd years) . Which means a drive to the local village, park wherever I can, walk to Chemists and collect my drops.
2. Walk the 3 paces from my doctors door to the Chemists next door.

So I settle on the next door Chemists. I wander in and hand over my prescription.  The chemist goes over to her terminal

<tappity> <tappity> <tappity>

Chemist 1: “You’ve never been here before!“

Me: “I never been ill before!“

So she starts to enter my details into the computer

<tappity> <tappity> <tappity>

Chemist 1: “How do you get to the next bit of the address, its wont go there?“

Chemist 2: “err you hit that button, then type there“

<tappity> <tappity> <tappity>

Chemist 3: “you just  move the mouse over there!“

Chemist 1: “oh the mouse!“

So they finally get my details entered into the computer, print off the labels, and come to give me my drops.

Chemist 1: “Here you go, sorry but your address printed out wrong, and you cant really read it”

Me: “err, its ok, I know where I live!“

so. Doctors = 10 minutes, Chemists = 30 minutes

Is it just me? Or does everyone else have these same problems?

I have spent the last few weeks suffering for Conjunctivitis.

“A couple of weeks?” I hear you ask.

Well, The first week as it started getting worse I was convinced i’d just scratched my eye, making it inflamed. I was wrong, as my doctor told me withing 5 minutes of me finally going to get medical help.

Its an interesting experiance, If i close my good eye, its like I’m wandering about in my own fog of blurryness making everything look fluffier, Ok Driving has become a much more extreame sport, but you have to take the good with the bad.

The only thing left is to wait for the results of my co-workers poll, who are trying to work out if i now look more like the terminator, or an infected zombie with my one bright red eye.