What is Jerry Hall doing with that man's shirt, martle?

Ripping it off his all-too-well-developed pecs, I'd say tinners. Although, given her eyesight, she probably thinks it's his trousers.  

Well, just read my post a few above and then decide if money has anything to do with it! Where I go, they won't let me simply order some more lenses on my old prescription - I have to have the £20 eye test first. They refuse to sell me my lenses! Bonkers.
Sorry, I've woken up still in rant mode. I'll try to improve.

Thanks George! 

I feel better now.

I agree.  I had to be tested for glaucoma from the age of 30.  It runs in the family down my mother's side.  It isn't the sort of glaucoma you get with old age obviously - I think that's wide angle - this was narrow angle glaucoma.  (It might be the other way round, but at any rate with our family it is something to do with the shape of your eye.)

When I was 34, I went as usual for my annual test with the specialist and he found that I was just at the start of what would be an acute attack.  They rushed me straight into hospital that afternoon and operated on both eyes - a surgical bilateral iridotomy (or was it iridectomy?...can't remember).  Anyway, I was lucky because I could have gone blind literally overnight.

Eyesight is too precious to neglect.  Annual eye tests I would say should be a must for anyone over 40.  Mine are free since I had the glaucoma, but the optician manages to charge me for other things - "Optimap" - which looks at the back of your eye and is actually marvellous.  Again, this is voluntary, but it's a wonderful thing.  I have refused a new prescription for the last two years for my reading glasses because I can read perfectly well with them when I'm tired and when I'm not tired I can read without them altogether.  You are at liberty to stand firm and say that you're perfectly happy with the ones you have at the moment thank you!  Don't be ripped off!  They're your eyes and you know how well you can see. 

All the same, they check for things like glaucoma and other deterioration and although brain tumours are rare they can sometimes spot them first if they're in the right place.  That can only be good too because it means you'd get treatment long before you had any symptoms - which can be too late.

I'm the same with the doctor Mary.  I hardly ever go myself.  I've always put this down to my mother being a hypochondriac - she's always at the doctor's, always imagining she has some dreadful complaint.  She's had just about every test, invasive or otherwise, for everything going.  There's never anything wrong with her.  Last week she was panicking that she had something or other and my dear long-suffering GP gave her a full set of blood tests - again!  I took her yesterday for the results, with her in an absolutely dreadful state of anxiety and nerves - only to be told, as usual, that they were all clear and that there is nothing wrong at all.  He's unbelievably patient with her.  Last year she was convinced she had bowel cancer because she'd been passing blood and got herself referred to a specialist for a colonoscopy.  Trouble was that on the NHS her appointment wasn't going to be for 9 weeks.  She immediately became hysterical saying that "this thing could have grown and spread by then".  I ended up paying more than £1000 for her to have it done privately only to be told it was haemorrhoids.  Had I not bothered of course and it had been an aggressive tumour, I'd have felt awful at making her wait for the test.  I always err on the cautious with her because of course one day she will have something wrong.  We all do.   At the moment it is all in her head, but she's had counselling and all sorts of treatment for her many anxieties and psychological and emotional problems, to no avail.

It's possibly the continual embarrassment of this (I'm absolutely mortified by it all) that makes me ignore symptoms myself.  This can be a huge mistake.   My husband was the same as me and for months he ignored symptoms that admittedly could have been put down to a lot of other minor things.  When I finally did manage to get him to a doctor in America, it was too late.  He had metastatic cancer.  So that is a cautionary tale - but I'm still guilty of not bothering much myself.  I just have an "MOT" at the BUPA hospital every three years.  Last year they found a breast lump which I had to have removed but fortunately it proved to be benign.  I suppose as we get older we should be more vigilant with these things.  

My mother has always been the same even as a young woman.  I grew up with it I'm afraid.  I was an only child and she tried to do it to me, taking me to hospital all the time when I was an infant (some sort of Munchausen Syndrome....by Proxy I think because it wasn't herself she was complaining about).  Eventually the paediatrician got fed up and told her off, so she reverted to being obsessed with herself again.

My father died of an aortal aneurism in 1988 - no symptoms, just bang, gone.  The previous record on his doctor's file was "tonsillectomy 1947".  I take after him thank goodness.