Urgent visit: a red or painful eye
twenty-five minutes (add five minutes for a first visit)
Kept free every day. Ring rather than book, so we can tell you where to go.
A red eye, a knock, something in it, or a change over hours or days.
$95
In the examination lane
Red eye and urgent visits
Time kept free every day for eyes that cannot wait until next week.
A red eye is a symptom with a dozen causes, most of them dull and a few of them serious, and the useful thing an examination does is separate them. Ring rather than book online: some of what is described on the telephone should go straight to an emergency room and we would rather say so than see you an hour later.
Some of this cannot wait for an appointment. Sight lost suddenly, a curtain or shadow across your vision, a shower of new floaters with flashes of light, or a painful red eye with vision that has dropped: that is an emergency room today, not an appointment. Everything else, ring and describe it.
Four things mean now rather than tomorrow, and they are worth knowing by heart: sight lost suddenly, a curtain or shadow moving across the vision, a shower of new floaters with flashes of light, or a painful red eye with vision that has dropped. Any of those is an emergency room today. Everything else, ring us and describe it.
What this includes
- Time held back every day rather than filled a fortnight ahead
- The front of the eye under magnification, which is what actually separates the causes
- Removal of a foreign body from the surface where that is what it is
- A pressure check, because a painful red eye with poor vision is a different problem
- A referral, made the same day, when the answer is that this is not ours
What this is not
- This is not an emergency room and we cannot act on a description over the telephone
- Sudden loss of sight, a curtain across the vision, or flashes with a shower of new floaters is an emergency now
- A chemical splash goes under running water for a quarter of an hour and then to an emergency room
The appointment
Booking this
Ring rather than book online, so we can tell you where to go before you arrive.
Where this is bounded
What we will and will not tell you here is bounded by these straight answers: We cannot tell you it is nothing and We cannot look at a photograph of your eye.
Ring first
Describe it over the phone before booking anything online.