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aww bless hun .....your parents will both be worried sick about you and sometimes the upset shows in different ways.

it is a lot of money - did your consultant have an opinion on whether he thought it would be advisable to go private. ?
what is your inner self telling you to do ?

we are all different and have different attitudes to risk.
If it were me I would most likely go private and find the money somehow

Get it done now would be my view. No doubt in my mind

Hi Nicola,

4 months is a long time to wait, if your father is happy to pay for you to go private then I'd take the offer up, the reason being your eye condition is causing you all sorts of stress and you say your unable to do your work properly which is also adding to your stress levels.

Whatever your decision I wish you luck and hope all goes well.

nicolabarnett said:

Hey all, thanks for all the support you have given me over the past few weeks. Saw opthalmologist yesterday who says I need another victoramy but there is up to a 16 week waiting time. He asked if I would consider going private and I could have the operation on 23 April, my dad says he would be happy to pay for as long as it doesn't cost over £5k, my mum says that it is a blessing in disguise having to wait for the same surgeon to do the operation as that means I will have to walk to work as I'm not allowed to drive. I work in IT and can't see enough to use the PC so I would have to be signed off from work until the operation.
I have caused so much upset between my parents because of this I don't know what to do

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Nicola - Do you know how much the operation would cost privately? I see you say your folks would sponsor up to £5k, but I'm not sure if that's the cast?

Please do get the cost, then speak to your manager at work. It could well be that the cost of your employer paying, privately, for your op could be cheaper than you having sick pay for the time up until the NHS can do it for you?

As a manager, I have paid (from my budgets, obviously) for a number of operations on that basis. Clearly you can't add in the cost of any recovery time to the equation as you will need that whenever you have the operation, but when you do do the calculations, please do remember to add a margin to the total to cover your employers usually hidden (from you) costs, like Employer NI and pension contributions. I would suggest c25% of your salary would probably cover that, although it would depend on your package.

You need to do a little prep before talking to your boss, so a quick call to the Doc's secretary or hospital is in order. When you call the hospital, you realistically need them to give you a provisional NHS date too, so that your employer (and parents) have something definite against which to compare things.

If your employer declines, then you have your parents support for fall-back. If the cost is greater than your folks can support, then if your employer can't cover the full amount, they could perhaps top it up? But, go for the full amount first.

Good luck. I can't help feeling sooner would be better, even just from the perspective of your mental wellbeing and the general impacts we all know stress can have on your diabetes.

If you want to "talk it through" at all, please drop me a PM if I can help you any more.

Going to tag @the_anticarb as she went private to get the vitrectomy operation.

Wishing you good luck Nicola, really hope this is the last time that you have to have the op. Take care.

thanks so much for the update Nicola- we are all wishing you well.[[[hugs]]]
xx

Wishing you all the best Nicola, I hope it goes well for you, take care x

I had a vitrectomy done privately in 2012, I was desperate to have it done as I'd just resigned from a job and was working my notice having taken another role which I would have had to pull out of, luckily I managed to find a surgeon who could do the op + recovery time to allow me to start my new job. Plus by this point I was almost phobic about my local NHS eye hospital as they had in my view abandoned me in my hour of need (not completely, but let's say their idea of priority and mine were not the same)
It cost around 6k plus I also had to pay 1k for an avastin injection a week before to make the op easier as it does something to the new blood vessels, shrinks them or something . If you have the chance to have it done privately I'd say go for it. You can have clear vision in that eye again in just a few weeks. My parents also helped me out, they had the means to do so (just about) and most parents would be glad to help I know if my children ever were in this situation and I could help them I would.

If you need the vitrectomy there is always the chance of further scarring/retinal detachment if you leave it so I'd say to go for it as soon as possible.

Edit - just seen you have booked to have the vitrectomy, good luck

Noblehead I didn't get your tag but found this thread anyway, not sure how the tag thing is supposed to work!

the_anticarb said:

not sure how the tag thing is supposed to work!

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If you tag someone (@ in front of their username) a notification comes up in their Alerts, it's a handy feature if you want to draw another members attention to a thread.