UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

Hey all,

I’m Vic, and I’ve been diagnosed with keratoconus for 6 years. I’m a 4th year medical student based in Birmingham, originally from Bristol. I’ve had one graft nearly 5 years ago, currently biding my time a bit before I have another. Not had much luck with lenses so relying on the glasses at the moment. After a fairly stable period, the eyesight is starting to deteriorate again. Very stressful combining reduced vision and being a medic. What else about me…. I like all varieties of cake, learning random foreign languages (currently learning Russian), and visiting remote bits of Central Asia, spent last summer backpacking through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

At the moment I’m still under my surgeon in Bristol, despite not having lived there for 4 years, mainly because he is very accommodating and understanding with me being a medic. But I’m currently considering asking to be changed to the West Mids Eye Centre because it would be far more convenient; I’m just a little apprehensive about making the move because despite having visited their eye casualty on countless occasions I don’t know much about how good the WM eye centre is at dealing with KC. I would be really interested to know if anyone has experience of them? Look forward to getting to know you all!

Vic

Hello Vic, and welcome to the forum.

Had you noticed that our West Mids group is having a meeting at the eye centre next Saturday?

Details are here.

I'm sure you'd be very welcome if you went along.

Hi Vic welcome, what cake you do like?!

Vic

Welcome to the forum

How far through your medical studies are you?

Andrew

Thanks people,

I think I might try and get along to the WM meeting next weekend, whereabouts in the WM eye centre is it being held, or will it be fairly obvious when I get there?

Louise: any kind of cake is good, but if you're offering, then chocolate cake is always very well received!

Andrew: I've done three years of medicine, taking a year out of medicine this year to do a BSc in medical law and ethics, and returning to my fourth year of medicine (5th year at uni) in June. Trying to meet the GMC's sight requirements for fitness to practise is an ongoing battle (they require driving-standard visiion), so the BSc is my back-up plan, so to speak.

I've been having a look through some of the info on this site and it all looks really good!
Vic

I taught medical ethics at one time and nearly went to the United States to work as head of the hospital ethics department. I decided to decline the offer when it became clear that the "ethical" input was a way of avoiding being sued.

Where a clinician had a problem the ethicist would be called. the clinician would go over the problem and the options open. The clinician and ethicist would discuss the options and their 'ethical’ implications.

At the end of this conversation, it was the duty of the ethicist to ask the clinician, "what is your clinical judgment" The clinician would answer and the ethicist would say, either:

"Your judgment is congruent with the policy of the hospital" this meant if anything went wrong the hospital's insurers would meet the cost of the law suit.

Or

"Your judgment is not congruent with the policy of the hospital". This translates as "If you insist on following a course of action as foolhardy as that, you had better have your own insurance, because we're not covering you!"

The ethicist was employed by the hospital's insurer.

Andrew

I can see why you turned it down Andrew...
Chocolate cake on it's way...

Yes. I get passionate about medical ethics, and really took it as a kind of personal insult to find tht the discipline should be hijacked by insurers as a way of avoiding liability or even second guessing the clincal judgements of experienced clinicians.

Oh well. I'll probably put the cake into the mircowave so that the body of the cake becomes warm and all the topping and filling melts into a kind of chocolate goo.

Andrew

Vic

Is the vision getting worse in the grafted eye? What does the consultant say is the reason?...How well do you see with both eyes?..Correct and uncorrected

J

Andrew; Homer Simpson kind of dribbling....