SomeoneElse @ SomeoneElse @lemmy.ca

Posts

3

Comments

217

Joined

2 yr. ago

Only 6% of adults are practicing Christians in the UK. It’s statistically unlikely this has anything to do with religion.

Spanish homework! My local city council offers free adult learning courses for people earning < £30k. I signed up for Spanish almost on a whim. I was nervous as hell to begin with, but three lessons in I really love it.

How many over 100 year old swimmers are competing in this thing?!

Do both pupils work? How does it effect vision?

This is pretty similar, right down to the location. I thought it was more likely to be blisters from golf or something it is awfully like secondary syphillis.

I have this problem when I shuffle my liked songs on Spotify. Someone suggested clearing the cache which has improved it slightly.

I’m an Apollo refugee and have tried a number of apps but I keep coming back to voyager (the web app, not the app app). It’s far from perfect but it’s the closest to Apollo imo too.

20+ years ago I had to read Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love for English A level and swore off hot air balloons forever more. Great book for anyone not wishing to take a balloon trip though.

Boo. A taped off hole in the plane with a random window affixed is much funnier than just what’s under the interior “walls”.

I love the photo in the thumbnail. “Yup, that should do it. She’s good to go!”

Yeah, if you block someone (not ban them) they can still go to a community you moderate and post there - but you won’t see it. Obviously that’s not ideal from a moderator perspective. I tried just using one account and not blocking people, but there are a lot of trolls/arseholes/bots out there and I just don’t want to see their drivel on my feed - even if what they say isn’t technically against the rules, or doesn’t met the criteria to earn them a ban. And you can’t ban accounts just because you don’t like them (or you can, but that’s not good moderating).

Also moderator decisions are meant to be made objectively and I find having two accounts helpful to maintain that objectivity. A comment from my mod account is official but a comment from my browsing account only carries the same weight as a comment from any other user. Some iOS apps allow you to distinguish moderator comments from your standard comments. That works great but it doesn’t seem to be the standard across all platforms/apps.

I just added “mod” to the end of my username for my alt account. Obviously that wouldn’t work if my username had a slur in it or something, but it’s a pretty straight forward fix. It allows me to block idiots on my browsing account, offers a helpful separation between things I say as a user vs things I say as a mod, but subscribers to my communities still know who I am so there’s some accountability.

The $3 million criminal penalty was the maximum possible fine under the charges.

Thank you for this!

You’re welcome! Here’s the source for frostbite. No idea how reliable it is though.

I did a bit of googling. At temps below 6C or 42F, elephants are at risk of frostbite. Thinner elephants are more at risk. I assume mistreated, very young, elderly and sick elephants are more vulnerable, like humans. In the wild, healthy adult elephants huddle together for warmth.

India is absolutely massive and in the north you have the Himalayan mountains. Temps drop as low as -45C, -42F in some areas. Elephants do live in the Himalayas, but I assume not at high altitude/in the coldest parts.

Omg you’re still going on about this! Dude, let it go. You are the only person I ever see complain about the use of /s.

Seconded from a female pov too!

Thanks. I was angry for ages, now it’s just another lupus gift - nothing to be done except get on with it. Wishing you many more good days than bad!

TL;DR: most people in the UK don’t ever see an eye doctor until they get cataracts or similar in old age. Yearly opticians appointments are normal for people who need glasses - but the tests aren’t to the standard needed for those on hydroxychloroquine. I should have seen an ophthalmologist at least 11 times in the last 15 years instead of twice, but I “fell through the gaps”.

In the UK regular “eye exams” are called eye tests and are not covered by the NHS for most adults (unless you’re very poor and even then it’s still not free, you just get a voucher towards your glasses). Eye tests are done by optometrists (not doctors) mainly in corporate owned businesses like Boots or Vision express. I’ve been short sighted since childhood and have had eye tests done at boots at least every other year, if not yearly. Until last year, there was nothing to report.

But eye tests done at the opticians are not the same as in-depth as the tests an ophthalmologist at an eye hospital does. Until very recently (post pandemic) Boots didn’t have the capability to do OCT scans. Even when they got the capability, they wanted to charge an extra £25 for the privilege. In my case the waved the £25 fee (handy, I couldn’t afford it) because they could see there was a problem. They were meant to refer me to the eye hospital for urgent review but they “lost” my referral and didn’t inform my doctor of the problem. I continued taking hydroxychloroquine for 7 months because of their error, with the toxicity ever increasing. Eventually I was seen at the eye hospital and the damage was confirmed. I’m now seen there every 4 months. The can’t reverse the damage and it may continue to worsen even though I no longer take hydroxychloroquine.

As you pointed out, I should have been referred by my rheumatologist to an ophthalmologist at the eye hospital for yearly checks after my 5th year of taking hydroxychloroquine. For whatever reason I wasn’t. They blamed the pandemic in part, but they missed 10 years, it’s not all Covid’s fault. They did apologise unreservedly though.

So I didn’t know I needed to be under the care of the eye hospital, no one involved in my care including consultants, nurses, GP, pharmacists or my opticians told me I should be under the care of the eye hospital, or spotted the fact no one was monitoring me. When I first told my consultant he couldn’t believe it was down to the hydroxychloroquine until it was confirmed, because in 35 years of practice he’s never seen hydroxychloroquine toxicity before.

So I slipped through a crack. I considered suing both boots and the NHS for medical negligence, but it felt wrong. Instead I settled for an apology and a new warning that pops up for every patient on long term hydroxychloroquine when their medical records are accessed. Hopefully that will prevent anyone else from “falling through the cracks” again.