Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Life's curve balls

Life has a way of throwing you curve balls when you least expect it.

Saturday night, I'd had a ball at a party, get in the car to drive home and see little flashes of light out of the corner of my left eye (not UFOs, flashes in my eyes!)

Took a couple of Panadol, went to bed.
Sunday morning, flashes eased but blurry spots floating in my eye constantly.
Monday, more of the same, so this morning I went to an optometrist.

Turns out I have a PVD in my left eye.
Posterior Vitreous Detachment, where the jelly-like vitreous detaches from part of the retina at the back of the eye. The floaters are bits of jelly.

No cure, just have to live with it.

Yeah, it's a major pain, but could've been worse.
If the flashing lights come back, could be sign of retinal detachment and that's instant surgery to minimise loss of vision.
Pretty scary stuff!

No reason it happens, idiopathic, but it tends to happen in older people over 60! Hello! Not there for a quite a while yet! The joys of getting older...

In the meantime, I'll still be writing and reading and doing my best to ignore the blurry bits.
Interestingly, it's worse in brighter light, so if you see me swanning around in sunglasses permanently, it's not an ego thing, it's a necessity. :)

4 comments:

Kerrin said...

oh dear, fingers crossed it gets better and not worse!

Lacey Devlin said...

I'm so sorry to hear that, Nic. *Hugs* I think the sunglasses will work well for a glamorous, published writer.

Unknown said...

Sorry to hear about your vision problems! It's hard to adjust to the changes in vision. I'm very nearsighted and have to be cautious of seeing the flashes of light for fear of retina detachment. I have black floats in my vision. Not fun. On the bright side, the sunglasses will help prevent other eye issues as well.

Sonali said...

Hi Nic,

So sorry to here about your vision problems. Best wishes and hope it doesn't get any worse. I agree with Lacey, your gonna look incredible with your sunglasses, so no worries about that.