The Eye Unit

The Eye Unit of Southampton General Hospital was nearly one of the worst things about all this (I think being diagnosed with cancer kind of tops it, but it was still awful).

I thought my recommendation letter would speed things along, but some people had been returning to that waiting room for days. My parents would swap, so someone was always with me despite the fact that I was twenty-one at the time. Hours and hours spent sitting in that waiting room. Occasionally, I would get called in to do a test (Apparently my eyesight is actually very good as the double vision only affected me at long range)

When we eventually got called in to see a doctor I thought my mother might cry with relief. They did an ultrasound on my closed eyelids and I was thinking "Okay now we're getting somewhere." The ultrasound showed exactly the same results as the eye test at the optician. Swollen at the back. So we were told to come back the next day.

It went exactly the same as it did before. Hours and hours of waiting, occasional vision tests, they even did an ultrasound again. This time the doctor called in for someone else, someone more experienced. I had lots of different tests done that day, though they were the tests I had done at the optician, but at least it was a small break in the monotony. Though I knew something was wrong, I really wanted to give up with it all. I can't begin to imagine what it was like for my parents, especially my mother, who was up there a majority of the time.

As long as it took, I was eventually told that I had been recommended again. This time to the Neurological department. Now I knew things were getting a little more serious, but as I said before, I knew what hydrocephalus was and I also knew that could be my problem. So this recommendation to the Neurological department didn't throw me. I don't know what must have been going through my mother's mind, apparently she thought I simply needed glasses.