![]() ![]() It leaves you effectively blind in that eye for a couple of weeks until it settles down and then the usual period of readjustment to an eye which sees the world in a different way. I needed to be rid of all that sticky vitreous that was pulling off my retina. Luckily a sympathetic local eye surgeon gave me the all clear to jump on the earliest plane out and get back to Australia (and affordable health care). It wasn't floaters that passed before my eyes. I was incredulous, the anxiety made worse by the fact that I'd left Australia for the US, without travel insurance. Sure enough, it was six months later, it was a Saturday night and I was in Seattle in the United States and boomp another half moon in the same eye. ![]() Four hours later I got the cryo and the gas and a warning from my retinal surgeon that if it occurred again things would be getting serious. Again I had the sickening realisation there was a second detachment in one of my eyes. The thing is that once you've had a detachment you're at risk of another hence the buckle to hold it all together.Īlmost ten years later again almost to the day on a sunny morning walking to get a coffee boomp out of the blue, a half moon-shaped black spot filled my lower vision. Untreated, a detachment can become larger and larger and render you blind, especially if it's near the macula the tiny part of the retina where we do most of the seeing that we need for reading, recognising faces, working on a computer and so on. Occasionally though the tug tears the retina and fluid gets in behind lifting it off the back of the eye. In some people, this tugging is all they have with a few flashes from time to time. If this jelly becomes sticky (as it often does as we age), it can adhere to the retina and tug at it. This stretches the vitreous the jelly that fills the eye. The reason is that people with myopia have eyeballs that are too long. Retinal detachments are more likely in people like me who are short sighted (myopic). I couldn't believe it and went to the eye hospital with that trapped feeling same deal as before with the cryo, the bubble, the buckle, the temporary double vision and the no-going-on-planes rule. ![]() I jolted and covered the other eye to get a good look without realising what an idiot I must have looked from across the table. The floaters were painless but they caused me psychic pain because (this time) I knew what they meant. Two years later, almost to the day, I was in the middle of a meeting when a shower of tiny floaters flooded my other eye. There was good news though: no permanent scotoma. My optometrist must have thought it was Christmas because I went through several sets of lenses for my spectacles before my eye settled down. ![]() This might not be a problem for some people but I catch planes like most people catch buses so for me being grounded made me feel like a grounded teenager.Īnd then there were a few weeks of double vision caused by the distortion from the buckle. Then came a period of lying on my tummy to keep the bubble of gas in the right spot followed by several days not flying (you can't fly with a bubble as it expands with the reduced cabin air pressure and causes further damage). A bubble of gas was injected into my eye to hold the welded retina in place and a plastic buckle was wrapped around the eyeball to crimp the retina and prevent another detachment. The next morning I was in the operating theatre having the retina welded back with cryotherapy (freezing). It all fell together for my dumb brain: a rush of floaters, a black spot and flashes… It had to be a retinal detachment. I shook my head and convinced myself it was just a particularly large lump of orange peel in the marmalade, and not the first sign that if I didn't do something, the retina might peel off completely rendering me blind with a scotoma to end all scotomas.Ī few days later, I was at the movies a Woody Allen from memory and during a belly laugh, I saw a vertical flash of light near the same position as the black spot. There was a black spot blocking it out (technically this is called a scotoma and occurs where the retina is lifting off the back of the eye). Then one night I was lying in bed and couldn't see the light in the ceiling. There were chunks of the stuff like English marmalade and I happily ignored it. Most of us have floaters those tiny bits of debris that float in and out of your vision. My first detachment started with a burst of floaters. The reality is that in most people it happens spontaneously. Most people think of a retinal detachment occurring during violent sport or bungy jumping. It is an emergency that can cause permanent vision loss and ultimately, blindness. That'd have to be the message at least from the first time I experienced a retinal detachment.Ī retinal detachment is when the eye's light sensitive layer, the retina, becomes separated from its supporting tissue. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |