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| Saturday, June 2, 2007 |
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Here's blurring at you, kid 
| | So here's what I wrote to my friend the opthamologist yesterday afternoon: |
| | I'm sitting here in the Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School, staring at this white screen, and noticing that the vision in my left eye is impaired by the presence of what appears to be dusty debris inside my eye. As I move my eye around, I can see the usual bubbles next to the retina (like ones one occasionally sees, though much more numerous), but also lots of what appear to be dust, like you would see in a snow globe turned upside down. Each particle seems to be a different distance from the retina, like snowflakes at different distances from the surface of the globe. They move with my eye as it moves, with a little continued motion after my eye stops. Some of the dust seems to be in bunches, and look like what I see on a digital photograph when there is dust on the sensor: a bit blotchy, like a smudge. At about 18 inches from this computer screen, I'd say the dust particles are about the size of a degree symbol (°), and only a little less packed than the letters in this paragraph. (Which I'm viewing in 10-point mono-space Courier type.) |
| | When I move my eye rapidly, I also see, very briefly, in a flash, a crescent shape curved around the periphery of my vision, from about the 6 o'clock position to about the 10 o'clock position: a section of a circle. Sometimes it appears to be blue, or white. But the sensation is similar to the one I get when an upper-lid eyelash is turned around and hanging into the edge of my vision. (Or, at my age, a long eyebrow hair.) It also sometimes seems to twitch. This is far less noticable than the "dust" issue, but it's there, and I noticed it first, yesterday morning. |
| | So I'm wondering... should I be concerned? I'm here in Boston with the family, and wanting to see Paul Revere's place and stuff like that. Not a doctor. But... this came on over the last two days and seems worse. It also occurs to me that the inside surface of my eye is made up largely of retina. Is this retinal debris? Scary thought. |
| | I just checked my peripheral vision by looking at a small black speaker on a large white wall, turning my eye in all directions gradually as far as I could to the edge of my vision. I didn't lose sight of the speaker. (Although I can make the thing disappear into my blind spot, which has always been a cheap thrill for me.) |
| | Anyway, lemme know if you think I should call or go see somebody. |
| | When I walked outside at the end of the day, a light rain was falling. When I looked up at the sky, it was still as if I had turned a snow globe upside down — only worse. A field of tiny bubbles and dots floated in the vision of my left eye. Some were very clear while others were less distinct, much as when looking through falling snow some flakes will be in focus while others will not. The sharp ones, which looked like tiny bubbles or black dots, must have been right on the surface of the retina. These were much like (what I later learned are called) "floaters" that we all sometimes get in our vision, but far more numerous even than they appeared inside the classroom. |
| | The bright flashes around the corner of my vision, when I moved my eyes, were also still there, though more obvious now that I was outside. |
| | I called my opthamologist buddy's office, but learned he was out of town for a week, and his backup doctor was also out. So I called my sister and had her do some research, which suggested that these were symptoms that might betray the onset of retinal detachment. When I went to the Harvard after-hours urgent care facility, the doctor there agreed and sent me to the Massachusetts General Eye Care Center, where, at great length and with much waiting around, the opthamologist there told me I had three conditions: posterior vitreous detachment or PVD, pseudoexfoliation syndrome and cataracts. Other than all that, I'm fine. The PVD will remain an annoyance for weeks or months. The cataracts aren't bad yet, but will get that way and require surgery eventually. And I'm at greater ris of glaucoma, too. |
| | All this stuff tends to show up with people over 65. I'm not even 60 yet, but here we are. |
| | Aging sure does suck. But, as they say, it beats the alternative. |
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