Missed appointments

A Royal Infirmary, yesterday

Last week, I missed my first ever diabetes-related appointment at my local hospital. Prior to this mishap I tutted angrily to myself when I read about people who were too lazy to bother turning up for appointments – wasting valuable medical staff’s time and costing the NHS. But now, sadly, I join the serried ranks of Bad People.

<rant>

In my defence, such as it is, the appointment was for an eye check-up during which they spend ten minutes taking a high-resolution (and surprisingly interesting) picture of the back of my eyes. The appointment is generally very quick and is usually included as part of my usual annual review up at the Royal Infirmary.

However, for some utterly inexplicable reason the eye check up is now done separately from everything else – the A1C, foot check and all that jazz that we know and love. This means more trips up to hospital each year.

If you are not familiar with Edinburgh (and you should be, it’s a lovely city), the Royal Infirmary is a newly-built hospital on the very outskirts of the city and is a complete and utter pain to get to. I usually take a morning off work to bus / taxi there for appointments and it costs both me and my employers time and money to get there.

Like a considerable number of Type Ones, I’m in full time professional employment and hold a responsible position acting for clients all around the world (no, really, I do); continually dropping everything and spending mornings up at the hospital is just not practical or sensible.

So which hair-brained dolt thought that it was a good idea to split the ;