Do You See What I See?

You see this?  I do.

Now.

These are called floaters and maybe you're familiar with them.  I was not.  But, when I suddenly started to see them, I naturally panicked.  Suddenly, I was afflicted with every kind of brain disease possible.  I would be starring as the male version of Bette Davis in "Dark Victory."

It started about two weeks ago.  There are days where I stare at a white screen on a computer monitor for several consecutive hours.  Oh, I get up and walk around.  But, it's pretty much constant work.

I started seeing these little specks.  I swatted them, thinking there was a fly in my room.

They'd pop up intermittently and I figured I was simply gaping at the computer for too long.  I'd rube my eyes.  Gone.  Oh, wait, not quite.

Then, when I would turn off the lights at night before retiring, a quick turn of my head would send a shooting star right across my bedroom.  What the hell was that?  A lightning bug?  The world's smallest burglar.

When it happened over several days, I decided I was dying.  Or going blind and then never getting to actually see a World Series game at Dodger Stadium.

When the cobwebs start to form when I was out driving, I decided I was still too young to die.  I immediately called my eye doctor's office for the earliest possible appointment.

That afternoon at 415PM was not soon enough.

In the several hours prior to my date with a certain death sentence, I did the very thing I always counsel friends not to do.  

I Googled my health problem.  

"Black specks in vision."

Hmmmm....

I suddenly began a quick education on eye floaters.  Little pockets of jelly or liquid that can stream across your eyes.  Because virtually all of my good vision is in my left eye, I had no idea if I had floaters on the other side.  But, clearly, this was the diagnosis.  I then typed....

"Streaming lights in vision at night."

Hmmmm....

Okay, also associated with the same eye floater problems.  I wanted to then Google to see if all this knowledge would get me an optician's license to practice.

The summation of all this is that floaters happen to lots of people as they get older.  I hate the very last word in that sentence.  There's not much you can do with them.  You simply wait for them to go away.  As long as they are not caused by a detached retina, you just deal with them.

But this was all news to me.  And apparently not to my friends.

Speaking to several folks after my visit with Dr. World Wide Web, I learned that they all have experienced this from time to time.  Hey, how come nobody told me?  Suddenly, I wasn't so conflicted.  And then wondered why I had been left out of the floater loop for so long.

When I saw my eye doctor later that day, he pretty much regurgitated to me everything I read on Google.  So, Wikipedia is reliable, huh?  

He told me they had suddenly appeared with me because I was having "an event."  Those were the words.  Is this like a red carpet pre-show?  I told him I wasn't interested in attending this event, even if it was free.  

Subsequently, he sent me to a retina specialist because he wanted to rule out any real issues with this, my only good eye.  I got myself super-diluted to the point where outside sunlight presented a bright white aura that might be heaven-like.  And the subsequent exam showed no damage with the retina.

"You will just learn to live with them until they go away."

Like annoying relatives, they're still around.   But I noticed less of these pesky floaters, so perhaps the end is near.

Except ailments like this do provide me with another constant reminder.

That end is near, too.  Getting old sucks.

Dinner last night:  Home made pizza with mozzarella and proscuitto.