Walking down the stairs the other day, I got these weird linear flashes in my right eye.
This is very bad for those who don’t know, as it is indicative of a retinal tear or eye jelly getting sticky and pulling on the retina.
When the jelly unsticks from the retina, you get the floaters, btw.
So my VA guy sticks a crab meat fork kind of thing under my eyeball and starts counting. Three tears, one being called a horseshoe.
I have immediate laser surgery to weld the flapping retinal wall. Hurt like a deep bone toothache. Best light show I’ve seen in a long while.
Blinky today, and wanted to share with the older folks because this is what happens. Floaters are bad. If you have more than usual, go see your eye guy. If you have linear flashes out of nowhere, see someone asap.
Floaters look like cells under a microscope or floating hairs. @jdsmith will you need a vitrectomy?
I was unlucky because I initially had no flashes or floaters to indicate a problem, just a slight blurriness in the corner of vision that I finally noticed. I had immediate laser surgery to prevent further tearing, but still needed another surgery to fix the tear.
Vitrectomy is a surgery to remove some or all of the vitreous humor from the eye. Anterior vitrectomy entails removing small portions of the vitreous humor from the front structures of the eye—often because these are tangled in an intraocular lens or other structures.Wikipedia
The first guy, intern I’d say, said it’s not preferred. But, he also said laser surgery wasn’t either, then they saw how severe my situation was, so zap zap zap.
If you caught it early enough you might avoid one, but if the tear is big, you’ll need one for sure. Or scleral buckle is another option that won’t result in a cataract.
I wish you luck that you got it welded back in place in time.
On that topic: Most of them are actually harmless and many eye doctors won’t really treat them.
It’s the sudden onset of floaters and the flashes one needs to worry about.
Oh, and there is laser treatment against floaters too, but there is some risk they accidentally hit your retina. That’s why they usually won’t recommend it for younger people. So I decided to live with mine.
Yes. The laser might bounce off the floater and burn a nice hole in your retina, for like ever.
That and the accepted practice is that your brain will get used to it and will ignore it, like it does with the aliens walking around us all the time – and ghosts.
Usually results from lattice degeneration, which affects about 10% of the population I think. Direct injuries to the eye can also cause them of course.
So, going back for a follow-up today. Have not had any more flashes in my right eye, so that’s good. The floaters have been far more prominent, and I supposed to just allow my brain to stop seeing them. That has become an issue, because I have one or two very dark spots that jet around my eyeball jelly and look like gnats or bees or ants or spiders depending on where I am and what I’m doing. If I reach for a chip, I pull my hand away because there’s an ant on the plate. I swat at imaginary bugs and look like a lunatic.
If I were schizophrenic, there’d be a real problem.
