DeejayR
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 2,389
- Type of diabetes
- Treatment type
- Diet only
A little tale from one of my neighbours.
She and her husband are both diabetic, and like me were called in recently for the annual retinopathy test at the local hospital (conducted by an outside source, not the hospital).
Her husband is in his eighties, has poor eyesight, is almost completely deaf, and walks with difficulty with sticks. However, he gets around in an electric buggy.
He got himself to the hospital in his buggy, as he has done in past years, and no one has ever suggested he should not drive himself home.
This year because of his deafness he could not respond to the tester's instructions about looking left and right, and in the end the tester apparently gave up without getting a result.
Our old chap, presumably with his vision even more defective than usual due to the eye-drops, then encountered roadworks on his way home, turned round to seek another route, and got lost.
Long story short, a police patrol found him six hours later, five miles away, hobbling along the verge of a dual carriageway on his sticks, his buggy having run out of power. He was of course confused and distressed. It seems no-one else had stopped to help him,
The police rang his wife and took him home. She seems resigned to "yet another episode among many", but rather worse than most.
How could that happen at the hospital? I'm gobsmacked.
She and her husband are both diabetic, and like me were called in recently for the annual retinopathy test at the local hospital (conducted by an outside source, not the hospital).
Her husband is in his eighties, has poor eyesight, is almost completely deaf, and walks with difficulty with sticks. However, he gets around in an electric buggy.
He got himself to the hospital in his buggy, as he has done in past years, and no one has ever suggested he should not drive himself home.
This year because of his deafness he could not respond to the tester's instructions about looking left and right, and in the end the tester apparently gave up without getting a result.
Our old chap, presumably with his vision even more defective than usual due to the eye-drops, then encountered roadworks on his way home, turned round to seek another route, and got lost.
Long story short, a police patrol found him six hours later, five miles away, hobbling along the verge of a dual carriageway on his sticks, his buggy having run out of power. He was of course confused and distressed. It seems no-one else had stopped to help him,
The police rang his wife and took him home. She seems resigned to "yet another episode among many", but rather worse than most.
How could that happen at the hospital? I'm gobsmacked.