Jesus in a white coat

I had to deal with a particularly difficult set of parents today (Mr & Mrs X) who asked to meet with me as they were anxious & angry that their daughter had been prescribed glasses when 'there's nuffink wrong wiv her eyes'. Having already spoken to Mrs X on the phone yesterday I knew it was likely to be a very unpleasant encounter. The natural reaction is to be defensive & there is a temptation to concentrate on justifying what treatment has been given, rather than really answering the parents' concerns (however daft/unreasonable their concerns may appear).
Anyhoo, it occured to me that, if Jesus had been an Orthoptist, he would have been the best one ever and would know exactly how to handle these angry, difficult people. I have to admit I had never thought of Jesus in an NHS uniform before but it helped me to pray that I would say what He would have said and handle the situation as he would have done. In all my years of handling this sort of issue I'd never quite thought of it like that before. In the end it all went swimmingly.. although it started off with Mrs X nearly exploding with anger and walking out. By the end we were all best of friends and they were reassured and happy about their daughter's eye condition. It reminded me that, if I include God in what I'm doing, I can be part of the body of Jesus even when doing such seemingly unspiritual things as working for the NHS.

Happy Customer

Am a little snowed under today - Aaron, you are correct, I've been on too many jollys. I've spent Monday, Thurday & Friday in London this week at various meetings & my brain is exhausted. However, rather than have the opportunity to slob about today, I have spent all day doing paperwork etc to catch up on reports, invoices, appointments etc for my private patients. I need a secretary!
Anyhoo, if your printer runs out of ink, I can recommend "Smart Cartridge" in Boldmere. In the middle of trying to catch up on all the tedious paperwork, the last thing I needed was my printer to stop working. Davie said this new place had opened where they refill your old cartridge, so I thought I'd give it a try. It turned out that the cartridge was nearly full but it was faulty. He suggested that I could take it back to Tesco, as it was one of their own brand, but then he offered to fix it for free, which he did. He was an incredibly helpful chap, & I shall certainly be going back there. So nice to have some genuine & good customer service for a change.
After a few hours of happy printing, the wireless network has now stopped working for no reason at all, so I'm stuck again. Davie.... can you fix it?..... pleeeeease.......

See you Sunday

Won't be posting for a few days as am off to Newcastle tomorrow to a 2 day conference and then visiting my sister in Cumbria on the way back so won't be back til Sunday evening - hoping to back in time for the evening service though. I'm not really looking forward to doing such a lot of motorway driving so am planning to take it slowly and carefully.
Thought I'd leave you with a view from my sister's back garden in Garrigill- a world away from Boldmere.

Remember Remember the 4th of November

We have had a distinct lack of BBQs in our garden this year & so I'd like to make up for it by inviting you (yes, I mean you) to a gathering in our back yard on Sat 4th November from 7.30pm. There will be yummy food, warming drinks (that includes hot chocolate and brandy, or even both together if you want) and sparklers. We're not going to have any fireworks as it severely traumatises our moggies, but there's usually a really good view from our garden of everyone else's fireworks in the surrounding area!
If you know me well enough to read this blog, then consider yourself invited. Do we want you to bring anything? - nope, just come as you are, but please do pray for no rain that evening!
If you can come, keep the date free & let me know at some point so I can make sure I have enough toffee apples.

You're a what? Is that teeth or feet?

I now have bird flu - although it can't compete with Davie's bird flu. I have also changed the template for my blog, and I might change it a few more times before I settle on one.

In case you're wondering about the title of today's blog, that's the usual response I get when people ask me what I do for a living. There are only about 1000 Orthoptists in the country (compare that to 45000 physiotherapists) and seeing as I spend five sevenths of my life being one, it's quite important to me to know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I do appreciate that it's not really that important to anyone else - that is until they wake up one morning with double vision.

Anyhoo, should you be struck by an overwhelming desire to know what the NHS kindly pay me for doing, here is an extract from my professional body website:

What do orthoptists do?
Orthoptists are concerned with the diagnosis and treatment
of ocular motility and problems relating to vision. Some examples of these
problems are:
Amblyopia (lazy eye), which is a reduction in vision arising from a defect present in infancy or early childhood that prevents the eye from receiving adequate visual stimulation.
Defective binocular vision, which is the inability to use the two eyes together
in the correct way and which leads to impairment of depth perception.
Abnormal eye movements arising from injury or disease affecting the eye muscles or the nerve supplying the muscles, or a physical obstruction to eye movement.
Diplopia (double vision) resulting from abnormal eye movements or strabismus (squint).

So now you know. If you want to know more you can go to http://www.orthoptics.org.uk/patients/orthoptics.

There endeth today's lesson!