It's the last day of October today, and I always like to see how many patients will wish me a Happy Christmas before Halloween. This year it was two. I think one of them was being slightly ironic in the face of postal strikes, but the other was entirely serious. It makes me feel like doing my clinics in a Santa hat.

Not everyone was in a festive mood this week, however. The camera in one of our remote clinics broke down on Wednesday, and I spent Thursday afternoon in the office, phoning patients to tell them that their appointments would have to be rescheduled for early December. It's interesting the different reactions you get to this news. Some people are entirely reasonable, and take the view that 'it can't be helped', but others seem to see it as a personal slight against them, and will argue relentlessly, as though pointing out how inconvenient it is will miraculously fix our equipment.

I spoke to one such lady on the phone. Having explained our reasons for the cancellation, and apologised profusely, she immediately got uppity with me, and started ranting about how long it had taken her to arrange for someone to give her a lift to her original appointment. Now, the thing is, I understand that completely, and I actually feel a lot of sympathy for her. I had a hospital appointment a few months ago, for which I rearranged my working week, only for it to be changed with less than two weeks notice. It's the most annoyingly frustrating thing. But the difference here is that I was fully explaining our reasons. I'd informed her that our equipment had broken down, when it was going to be fixed, and the earliest available dates for another appointment. It was clear that these were circumstances beyond our control.

But the lady went on and on. I suppose it was just her chance to vent her (understandable) frustration, but I do wonder what she expected me to do about it. I offered her an earlier appointment at a location further from her home, but that wasn't good enough. She kept repeating how downright inconvenient it was, then pausing, as if she expected me to say "Oh ok then, you can keep your original appointment". Maybe she expected me to offer to come round in person with an Instamatic and take a few snaps of her eyes.

To be fair though, some of the other patients were lovely. When I apologised to one lady, she told me there was no need to say sorry, it was nobody's fault, and she thinks she gets a wonderful service from us. Then there was the elderly lady who told me that it didn't matter because she wasn't planning to come anyway. That threw me slightly.

In other news, I saw a patient yesterday who told me the amusing story of how she was first diagnosed with diabetes. Apparently her husband has been diabetic for years, and was given a blood glucose monitor for home use. The lady told me that she used to watch him test his blood every day, and then one day, whilst feeling a little bored, her curiosity got the better of her, and she decided to try it on herself. She got a reading of 18. The next day it was 19. And the day after that, she was officially diabetic. As she said to me with a shake of the head and a roll of the eyes, "I only did it because I was bored".

Dorothy Parker once said "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity". Although in this lady's case, it turned out to be Metformin.