Hi
Definitely keep your hospital appointments. They check for retinopathy by taking photos of the back of your eyes. It can change really quickly as well, I had some retinopathy they thought was fine three months later I could not see out of my left eye. I had an operation on it and although its a lot better some of my vision is blurred and distorted. As soon as the operation was over I had laser on the other eye as they could see it was also advanced. I could not see out of that eye shortly after and again had surgery. I thought these things happened to older people ( I am 29) but the specialists say you are at risk from having advanced retinopathy about 20yrs after suffering from diabetes.