Elin found the start of glaucoma on the OCT scan at my sixty-three-year-old check-up, with no symptoms at all. Referred the same day, drops started within the month, pressure normal since. I had been going to a chain for twenty years and nobody had scanned me.
Reviews
What Whitchurch says.
Six reviews, one for each thing we do, including the four-star one about the wait for a Saturday appointment. The full set is on the review platforms we are listed on, and every one is from a patient whose records are in the filing cabinet.
Collected by a third-party review platform. Names shortened at the reviewers' request.
Our five-year-old would not sit still for anyone. Elin got on the floor with the picture cards and had her laughing in two minutes. Lazy eye caught, glasses on the NHS voucher, fitted so they actually stay on. Free re-fit when she grew.
First contact lenses at forty-two with astigmatism. Val spent forty minutes at the mirror with me and would not let me leave until I could do it twice. Toric dailies three days a week for the gym, £22 a month, aftercare free. Should have done it years ago.
Beautiful frames and Josh is the most honest optician I have met: talked me out of the dearer varifocal because I would not notice the difference. Four stars because Saturdays are rammed and the wait for an appointment was two weeks.
Pensioner, HC2 certificate, embarrassed to ask about the voucher. Val did the form without a flicker and the voucher came off a frame from the main wall, not a corner of cheap ones. Paid £22 for varifocals. Nobody else has ever explained it.
Shower of floaters and a flash on a Thursday evening. Rang at ten to seven, seen at seven, scanned, posterior vitreous detachment, not a tear, told exactly what to watch for and checked again a fortnight later. All free under the Welsh scheme. I had been about to sit in A&E all night.
About the four stars
Rhian waited two weeks for a Saturday. Forty-minute tests are why.
A Saturday has room for nine examinations at forty minutes each, with one optometrist, and they go a fortnight ahead because everyone who works wants one. We could cut the examination to twenty minutes and double the slots, and every chain on Merthyr Road has. We would rather keep the forty minutes and add Thursday evenings, which we did last year, and a second Saturday optometrist, which is next. Walk-ins for frames, adjustments and collections never need an appointment.
Join the list.
Book an examination, wear the glasses for a month, and tell the next patient what it was like. Good or bad, it stays up.