"A painless and a quite agreeable procedure"

I went to the diabetic eye screening.

Arriving, I get directions at the reception and easily find my way. At the ward they cannot find my name and ask me to wait. Unfortunately I did not have the letter with me.

The clinician who’ll photograph my eyes asks me to write down name and DOB, while he handles the patient at my appointment time.

I successfully ask my partner to send me a photo of the letter … oh, I am a month early! I had somehow managed to misread the month! The clinician manages to take me after that patient, I confess my screw-up and we both have a laugh, my appointment is scheduled to now and the one in a month cancelled. 

I am very grateful on how they were able to make it work, I would have fully understood if I had to return in a month.

The procedure itself was easy, I did not even need eye drops (as had happened before) as they turned the room practically completely dark, switching off the computer monitor and all. Looking into the instrument with one eye all I see is the green LED my eye looks at and focuses on and a hint of the inside, then a flash and the photo is taken. I see a disk of swirling red and blue which fades in 20 seconds. Repeat for the other eye, then the same again, with the LED changed to one a bit off centre. 

I needed a 5th photo, as it turns out, my eye started to blink just before the flash photo was taken.  And that was that. I tell the reception of my slip-up with the month, so they know the error was solely on my side and not anywhere in their system, we have a short laugh again, then I say goodbye and leave.

It was a painless and a quite agreeable procedure. 

The alternatives are quite bad, using the slit lamp and pupil widening eye drops is downright nasty, especially as I have a really hard time not blinking with the bright light and my eye welling up with tears like crazy. And having your retina fail or detach without early detection and losing much of your sight is a horror story in itself and I’d rather not experience that.