If Thy Eye Offends Thee...

"Just great!", I thought, "Another floater." And it was a big one. I've had floaters as far back as I can remember. Some people are born with them, and I'm pretty sure that was my case. But this one was especially bothersome.

At least it was hanging around off the outside of my direct vision, in my left eye. I hoped it would hurry and break up. Then I remembered on my return to work after vacation a couple of weeks earlier, I kept seeing shadows behing me. This went on for days, and I thought it was people walking behind me. It was just then that I realized those "shadows" I was seeing was this stupid floater--not shadows of people.

Tuesday at work, as I was flipping my eyes from one wide-screen monitor to the other (yes, I use two monitors at once), this distorted, blurry thing began swinging across my center of vision. It would always move the opposite direction that my eyes moved. Since my left eye is my dominant eye, it was really bugging me and making it hard to do my job--which is writing. This was not an ordinary floater. It was like it was attached. It didn't sink like normal floaters eventually do (maybe they should've called them "sinkers").

I knew better than to put this off, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to call my optometrist. I wasn't seeing sparks or flashes of light that signal a retina detaching. I wasn't losing any part of my vision field. But there was definitely something wrong with my left eye. Wednesday, it was still there and seemed worse. I gave up and called to make an appointment, hopefully for Friday since it's my regular day off. But when I explained to the person on the other end of the phone, she pretty much insisted I come in that day. She made an appointment for 2pm.

As soon as I walked into Dr. Buechler's office, he asked what was going on with my eye. I told him I couldn't figure this one out. I explained my symptoms, and he reached for the dilating drops. After fifteen minutes, he pulled over the slit lamp biomicroscope to have a peek. No comments, so I hoped that was a good sign. But then he got out the artillery.

After giving me more drops to dilate my eye even more, Dr. B. pulled out this contraption to wear on his head. I knew this was the test where he used those horrible magnifying lenses. Those lenses intensify the light coming out of his head contraption to the point where they temporarily blind you. He was especially showing too much interest when my eyes were pointing down and to the left.

He told me he saw changes in the gel of my eye. He asked me if I'd ever heard of a vitreous detachment. I hadn't. He said it appears to be a vitreous detachment, but it looked slightly different than they usually do. He said there could be a retinal tear behind it, and he wanted me to see an opthamolgist. Not wasting any time, he picked up the phone in his office and called Dr. Flannagan's office. I was to come in immediately. Dr. Buechler put another drop of dilation juice into my eye so I'd be ready to go when I got to Dr. Flannagan's.

Luckily it was only a five-minute drive, since the sun was out full force and my eye was dilated. Dr. Flannagan's partner did the same tests on me as Dr. Buechler. She said she saw "old blood" and a large floater. She also told me that she wanted to check me again in two weeks, and until then I wasn't to do any "jarring" activities in case the retina was getting ready to detach. She said if there were no new bleeds and the retina looks ok, I'll be good to go. The eye should eventually absorb the blood and my vision should improve. Let's hope. This thing is about to drive me mad.

If this doesn't go away, I think I'm doomed to a life of watching this thing swing back and forth . So far, it only seems to be getting worse. Today it's darker.

I've learned that vitreous detachment happens to 50 percent of us over 50, and it normally doesn't cause a problem with your eyesight. At any rate, there's nothing they can do to fix it. If it causes a retinal detachment, that can be fixed, but since the vitreous detachment is caused by a shrinkage of the "gel" of the eye, that's just something I'm going to have to get used to.

Another wonderful side effect of "getting old".