Eyes

Today was an eye day, saw about 4 people with Foreign Body (FB) in eye. I love these, they are so satisfying. If there is an FB you remove it and show the patient what a tiny thing was causing them so much pain. If the FB has gone you tell the patient they have a corneal abrasion - after staining the eye and making the abrasion glow a lovely shade of green. Patients who present with FB eye are a joy.
Today I had one lad who for the first time ever I was unsure if he could read the Snellen chart, I really was not convinced that he could read. He managed fine but was absolutely fixated on the "bits of plastic that went in my eye" I could not convince him that the plastic was gone and that what he had was a largish corneal abrasion. Got there in the end. One was a young lad who had mud in his eye 24 hours previously, sent up by GP as he did not have a slit lamp to examine eye properly. This time it was mum who was fixated on the FB, "did you see the top of the eye? That is where the mud was". Reassured and discharged. The last patient was a gentleman who had had left eye problems a couple of years ago which required the input of the ophthalmology service and had got a piece of wood in his right eye 5 DAYS ago and was concerned that he might lose his sight but had not bothered to come and see us or see his own GP. Reasons, - we required 2 bus journeys and he did not like his GP. Again treated appropriately and discharged, but what was I going to do 5 days down the line if there had been something wrong, and more importantly, what were the ophthalmologists going to do?