Almost exactly a year ago, when I was getting ready for bed, I walked down our darkened hallway and saw a dramatic flash of light to my left. It was very brief but also very bright, and resembled the strobing effect from a phone when you have the ringer set to the flash.
It happened several times over a half hour or so and was very alarming. A quick google search showed this wasn’t something to ignore so we headed to the ER. It was about midnight.
They did some tests to rule out unlikely causes (which included a stroke) and did an ultrasound on my eye to rule out foreign objects and more extreme causes. Since there was no critical danger they referred me to a specialist, who I went and saw the next day.
It was then I found that the flashes were an aging effect, due to the vitreous gel in my eye changing into a liquid state (as it does as we age) and pulling on the retina in the process. While flashes themselves are normal and not a sign of great concern, the sudden appearance and frequency of the flashes I was having was an early warning sign that my retina may have been tearing. The doctor told me what to watch for, and sent me home.
Less than a week later, my retina tore. I was watching TV and suddenly with no warning an ‘explosion’ of black smoke seemed to fill my left eye. This was blood that had been released when the retina tore. I called the doctor, and he told me to come in the next morning.
The top side of my left retina had torn off the back of my eye, and I needed laser surgery to ‘staple’ the retina down to prevent further damage. The surgery was scheduled for later that same day, and while brief was exquisitely painful since the location of my damage coincided with a nerve. The procedure was a success, and after many follow ups over the next few weeks I was given a clean bill of eye health.
The thing is, things were hardly back to normal. The blood in my eye – as well as microscopic pieces of retina that had torn off – caused me to have floaters clouding my vision for many months. I also had regular eye pain and blurriness. I was unable to focus for long periods on close objects (like a handheld gaming system) and I developed an intense light sensitivity in that eye. It was an ongoing struggle, especially using a computer. Not an ideal situation when I was teaching 375 students in an online-only course.
A year later, most of these symptoms have happily passed, but some (occasional blurriness, light sensitivity) remain.
What I didn’t know was that the retinal damage changed the prescription in my eye quite a lot. I didn’t go to the optometrist until a couple of weeks ago (due to covid, and the assumption vision issues were not prescription related) and by then my brain had accommodated what had become an incorrect prescription. The optometrist told me the change in my left eye was ‘many years worth’ compared to my right eye, and now my new glasses are taking much longer to get used to as my brain struggles to recalibrate the left eye.
I’m very aware that this past year I’ve often used my eye as an excuse. But the pain and discomfort was often difficult to deal with, and I can assure you that one thing we take for granted – our vision – is almost impossible to ignore when it goes wrong. Things have definitely improved in my eye over the past year, but I’m not back to ‘normal’ yet and to be honest am not quite sure I ever will be.
The moral of this story: don’t age! And if you do, don’t ignore sudden flashes in your vision!
