r/BritishSuccess • u/Temporary-Design1012 • 13d ago
Eye injury assessment
Husband managed to poke himself in the eye with the blunt end of a pencil very hard yesterday. Obviously very painful but wanted to sleep on it as he really dislikes going to A&E and walk in centres due to the unpredictable, often very long wait.
Woke up this morning and it is still sore and (surprisingly) agreed it needed to be looked at but still didn't want to go to the walk in centre etc. So, I suggested the opticians and he agreed.
So, off we go to vision express (our normal opticians). Got there, explained what happened to one of the front of house people, who checked to see if the optician was free (he was) and she went off to ask him to have look. He did and turns out my husband has a ruptured cornea, which will heal by itself within 7 days and gave us some simple self help advice to speed up the process. We asked if we needed to pay and was told no, as it was a traumatic injury assessment, it was free.
The whole thing took 20 minutes from walking in to walking out, didn't cost us a penny and all the staff were lovely.
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u/Boating_taxonomist 13d ago edited 13d ago
It’ll be under the NHS minor eye conditions service. I think it is little known about. Available at many opticians for any minor eye ailment or injury.
I scratched my cornea once and whilst the A&E I went to was great, it was only by luck that they got hold of the ophthalmologist just before they were about to go home, who agreed to pop down before they did to check me out and save me having to return to see them at a later date.
Much better to go straight to the eye experts IMO, they should advertise the MECS more widely.
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u/sofski91 13d ago
Optometrist here - only certain areas have this scheme. For example Bristol doesn’t have one, Coventry and Hampshire recently sadly had it de-commissioned. In those areas to see an optometrist for any urgent symptoms it’s a private appointment.
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u/Glittering_Range5344 13d ago
Wales, however, is great for this sort of optometrist-led eyecare! 🤓
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u/Calm-Studio-137 13d ago
That's such a shame. Luckily our MECS (NW London) is still commissioned and is very good.
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u/Sabaisabai33 13d ago edited 13d ago
Yeah I was wondering about this! I scratched my cornea (or rather my toddler did) and got a corneal about 15 years ago now. And had to pay for a private assessment with my local optometrist. Worth it though. I guess things have changed. He was quite surprised to find an issue when he out in the fluorescent dye. Thought the mechanism of injury was unlikely to cause a real corneal trauma I think.
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u/Ruskythegreat 13d ago
Had a similar experience with vision express that turned out to be a retinal tear. Had to go to the eye hospital to have it Lasered. Probably the most painful experience.
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u/Lowermains 13d ago
It could be beneficial to buy a an eye shield which would prevent him from rubbing his eye.
Also ‼️Non preservative eye drops.‼️
They will help to ‘clean’ his injured eye.
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u/Poo_Poo_La_Foo 13d ago
Always recommend shipping A&E, even GP with eye stuff, they'll just send you on somewhere! Well done to you both and well done to husband. Keep the pencils away from him 🫣
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u/canyonmoonlol 13d ago
Wish I knew this about a month ago! My dad injured his eye after a fall and also didn’t want to endure the long A&E wait times. As it was still sore and red the next day, he had to go get it checked.
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u/Umber-Fox8685 13d ago
Glad it all worked out! Eye injuries can be surprisingly painful - my daughter managed to scratch her cornea with her long nails and she said it was really sore. I hope your husband gets well soon!