Why would the pope comment on a murder in England that has no religious motive? Has Justin Welby condemned it? Mirza Masroor Ahmad? Yitzhak Yosef? No, because it’s completely irrelevant. Stop piggybacking on this tragedy with your weird religious agenda.
Only 6% of adults are practicing Christians in the UK. It’s statistically unlikely this has anything to do with religion.
Yeah, if you block someone (not ban them) they can still go to a community you moderate and post there - but you won’t see it. Obviously that’s not ideal from a moderator perspective. I tried just using one account and not blocking people, but there are a lot of trolls/arseholes/bots out there and I just don’t want to see their drivel on my feed - even if what they say isn’t technically against the rules, or doesn’t met the criteria to earn them a ban. And you can’t ban accounts just because you don’t like them (or you can, but that’s not good moderating).
Also moderator decisions are meant to be made objectively and I find having two accounts helpful to maintain that objectivity. A comment from my mod account is official but a comment from my browsing account only carries the same weight as a comment from any other user. Some iOS apps allow you to distinguish moderator comments from your standard comments. That works great but it doesn’t seem to be the standard across all platforms/apps.
I just added “mod” to the end of my username for my alt account. Obviously that wouldn’t work if my username had a slur in it or something, but it’s a pretty straight forward fix. It allows me to block idiots on my browsing account, offers a helpful separation between things I say as a user vs things I say as a mod, but subscribers to my communities still know who I am so there’s some accountability.
Thanks. I was angry for ages, now it’s just another lupus gift - nothing to be done except get on with it. Wishing you many more good days than bad!
TL;DR: most people in the UK don’t ever see an eye doctor until they get cataracts or similar in old age. Yearly opticians appointments are normal for people who need glasses - but the tests aren’t to the standard needed for those on hydroxychloroquine. I should have seen an ophthalmologist at least 11 times in the last 15 years instead of twice, but I “fell through the gaps”.
In the UK regular “eye exams” are called eye tests and are not covered by the NHS for most adults (unless you’re very poor and even then it’s still not free, you just get a voucher towards your glasses). Eye tests are done by optometrists (not doctors) mainly in corporate owned businesses like Boots or Vision express. I’ve been short sighted since childhood and have had eye tests done at boots at least every other year, if not yearly. Until last year, there was nothing to report.
But eye tests done at the opticians are not the same as in-depth as the tests an ophthalmologist at an eye hospital does. Until very recently (post pandemic) Boots didn’t have the capability to do OCT scans. Even when they got the capability, they wanted to charge an extra £25 for the privilege. In my case the waved the £25 fee (handy, I couldn’t afford it) because they could see there was a problem. They were meant to refer me to the eye hospital for urgent review but they “lost” my referral and didn’t inform my doctor of the problem. I continued taking hydroxychloroquine for 7 months because of their error, with the toxicity ever increasing. Eventually I was seen at the eye hospital and the damage was confirmed. I’m now seen there every 4 months. The can’t reverse the damage and it may continue to worsen even though I no longer take hydroxychloroquine.
As you pointed out, I should have been referred by my rheumatologist to an ophthalmologist at the eye hospital for yearly checks after my 5th year of taking hydroxychloroquine. For whatever reason I wasn’t. They blamed the pandemic in part, but they missed 10 years, it’s not all Covid’s fault. They did apologise unreservedly though.
So I didn’t know I needed to be under the care of the eye hospital, no one involved in my care including consultants, nurses, GP, pharmacists or my opticians told me I should be under the care of the eye hospital, or spotted the fact no one was monitoring me. When I first told my consultant he couldn’t believe it was down to the hydroxychloroquine until it was confirmed, because in 35 years of practice he’s never seen hydroxychloroquine toxicity before.
So I slipped through a crack. I considered suing both boots and the NHS for medical negligence, but it felt wrong. Instead I settled for an apology and a new warning that pops up for every patient on long term hydroxychloroquine when their medical records are accessed. Hopefully that will prevent anyone else from “falling through the cracks” again.
It is most certainly not easy to revert. I was on it for 15 years and now have permanent, irreversible damage to my macular. I also can’t take hydroxychloroquine at all anymore because I will go blind.
But my doctors messed up and didn’t checked my eyes for over a decade. Once the usual optician spotted it, it was too late. If you see an ophthalmologist every year, they should spot any issue before it’s too late.
I followed my doctors advice (400mg daily for 15 years) and got retinol toxicity anyway. Now I have permanent damage to my macular, can’t take hydroxychloroquine anymore and my lupus is raging. It’s a fantastic drug, and blindness is a very very rare side effect, but for god’s sake insist on being monitored by an ophthalmologist. Current UK recommendations are an eye check before starting the medication, repeated after 5 years and then every year after that. I should have been checked 10 times in 15 years, I was checked twice.
Disney drop bear. It looks suspiciously clean… do you reckon it still has gonorrhoea or whatever it is they carry?
Linen trousers?