An honest warts & all sightloss blog. I'm living with Macular Dystrophy. To track my progression and hopefully help others. What will happen next?…
I’ve come out this evening to attend the monthly Pontefract group of VIPs (Visually Impaired People) For our Christmas do.
There’s a reason I attend these groups.
I was thinking I was taking an arty shot of the early evening sun behind the trees, when in fact it was a streetlamp.
Eastenders at the moment are highlighting medical scams.
The character Lauren Beale falls for a fake doctors lies about a trial that will help restore her youngest boys eyesight. The character of baby Jimmy has a Congenital condition called Chorioretinal Coloboma. So he is Severely Sight Impaired from birth.
This of course isn’t true, but she is cruelly tricked into sending £3000. Then when she tries to ring the doctor, his phone number isn’t available anymore and the messages stop.
Now Eastenders isn’t real life. But I have come across so many fake profiles of Doctors or people wanting to send untrue posts to my support group that I run alongside my blog.
I know these scammers try their very best to trick people who are probably caught at a stressful time, vulnerable or just hoping for help after diagnosis. Especially if you have a child who is sight impaired.
I know, because I’ve spoken to them and received messages myself.
I’ve had a few ‘doctor’s’ wanting me to write about them with the information they give me and or their Facebook page or the scam website. They contact me on my blog pages messenger service.
I’ve had people wanting to pop links to tshirt sales supposedly advocating blindness and being part of the community. They either are on pop up new websites, don’t donate to the charities stated or don’t exist at all. There is alot of that. They have thousands of different graphics wanting posted depending on the groups they try to join.
On my support page, I used to let anyone post free and easily. I didn’t vet the posts as I trusted that people would just be there either to read the posts in the group or contribute their story or something useful they thought people would find helpful.
Now I’ve popped post approval on.
I still get some people that slip by as I can only vet so much re the people who try to join the group.
I can ban people, and have done, if they are looking abit shifty. Profile behaviour wise.
Sometimes links and comments are made within somebody’s post. Stating a cure. These are sometimes reported to me directly or I come across them when checking a recent posts comments. I have to safeguard the people within the group. There’s nearly 500 of us at the moment. The link is below this paragraph.
Click to my Support Group on Facebook
So many fake pages. Fake profiles of people trying to scam us with giving false claims of cures or treatments.
I’ve always reported these but Facebook really doesn’t do anything at all. The amount of times I’m reporting these, then get the ‘we found this profile doesn’t go against community guidelines’
You can ban people or give warnings. I’ve banned plenty of people but you usually get a ‘spidey sense’ with these things. Any additional profiles they make or any others belonging to them are banned automatically from the group too.
Well step up your game Facebook!
There isn’t a cure or treatment as yet for Macular Dystrophy Stargardt’s Disease.
This doesn’t mean our world should stop and we should just sit and wait for a cure or treatment. Absolutely No. No way!
We need to carry on and enjoy life. I’m not waiting for a cure. Or treatment. I’ll write about any I find because it’s interesting to learn about what’s being discovered about our faulty gene variants.
Safe to say I’ll keep batting these people away.
Something that happened a few weeks ago, twice, because I didn’t use my handy magnifyer. I wouldn’t mind but it’s always in the front of my handbag.
I ended up taking too many Co-codamols for pain thinking they were Paracetamols because I was in a rush to meet my friends at Pontefract, for the VIP meeting there we have every month.
I’d forgotten I had these in my bag and only thought I had Paracetamol.
I ended up realising what I’d done so didn’t drink anything till alot later on. Just because I couldn’t be bothered to use it. It nearly ended up in me not attending at all.
Then, like a complete idiot, I took 2 of the same night-time tablets instead of one of each that I take to help me sleep and for my mental health. So I couldn’t hardly take the correct one aswell, as I’d already taken too many.
Bonkers isn’t it.
I can’t read the back of the pill packets to differentiate what’s what with just my glasses on and these silly moments of not getting my magnifyer out could have caused no end of sickness or problems for me so I’ve learnt my lesson.
One Vision Blog 