Can anyone help? How do I get an urgent hospital referral seen?

[scoobs321]

I am so worried, my daughter was diagnosed and treated for aged related wet macular degeneration at the age of 17. She is now 20 and we got her a routine eye test at the opticians last week inc an OCT scan. They picked up some concerns and did an urgent referral to our local eye hospital.

We can see its been sent to the hospital but when i phoned today they said there's no appointments and she's on the waiting list. They couldn't tell me how long it would be until she gets an appointment.

I am going out of my mind with worry - will whoever deals with the appointments take in to account she already has a serious eye condition? Waiting could cause even more problems with her eyesight.

I've been ringing around today trying to find someone who will give me some answers but I'm drawing a blank.

It doesn't look like she will be seen with the 2 week urgent referral window. Last time when the wet macular was detected at opticians we had to wait 7 months for an appointment in which time her eye sight was permanently damaged. I can't afford for that to happen again.

If anyone knows how these hospital systems work please please could you tell me what or how I get some answers?

I think if you go private you still need a referral so that involves another letter from the doctor/optician. You can’t up just rock up at the hospital and say ‘see me’.

@Motherhubbardscupboard thank you I feel very alone and scared right now, I wish this wasn't happening but being lost in a big system is making it 10 times worse. I feel sick when I think about it which is most of the time. Hopefully I will make some headway today. Thank you x

As a rough guide we paid approx £200 for a private consultation, no referral needed. This was with a company called Newmedica, they do have a clinic in Plymouth.

Unfortunately with the 3 days Junior Doctors strike this week, Consultants have had to cancel many appointments, so they are really struggling to see people in clinics this week. My DH has waited since September to see his Consultant (not eye related) and had an appointment yesterday which they cancelled the day before. His new appointment is for March.

Good luck for today. Make sure she keeps checking the amsler grid and go to A&E if you notice any distortion.

When you speak to the optician today, just ask is there are any abnormal yellow flame shaped deposits on the retina.

How short sighted is she? Does she have any problems with night vision at all?

@EverythingLouderThanEverythingElse thanks I did ring newmedica yesterday but the consultant she saw last time is away until Feb. But I will investigate further if we don't get an appt soon.

I've spoken to the WMD co-Ordinator, outpatient appts, opticians and finally the consultants secretary this morning. The secretary looked at my DDs info and explained that she's waiting for her referral to be triaged by the on call consultant. She said she would email the on-call consultants secretary to see if that could be pushed along any quicker and would include about her having had a long wait for treatment last time and the lasting damage to her eyes because of the wait. She said that they rec'd the referral on the 18/12 so it's actually quite quick that it's at this stage. She was really nice and very helpful. She spoke to my DD to get her consent to speak to me.
Honestly I could cry that I've finally got through to someone who was willing to help. I will keep on pushing until we get an appointment and if anything changes with her eyesight, i can see they have an emergency eye clinic number i can ring.

@underneaththeash from what i recall from the optician, he mentioned atrophy and showed us a small yellow circle with a blood vessel crossing over it. In the other eye he mentioned drusen and showed us the scan which looked like a mottled area? I have no idea of the scale of that though. My DD saw a pre-reg optician for her sight test and he was the one who told us the things on the scan and did the referral. He went and saw his supervisor to get the sign off on it all but he didn't come in and speak to us.

We have an appointment tomorrow with a private consultant ophthalmologist thank goodness. We still haven't heard anything from the hospital about her original referral. DD noticed some vision distortion in her other eye over the weekend so I think it's likely she'll need treatment asap for that. I was wondering if it's likely that a consultant seen privately would refer her to their nhs hospital (the appt tomorrow is out of area )

Obviously I'll pay for private treatment if theres no possibility of a quicker nhs appt

Plan of action is to go tomorrow see what consultant says then ask all the relevant q's about how and when to get treatment.