Hi, everyone! I confess, the title of this vlog is pretty much click bait but, I hope it doesn't distract from the real issue at hand. My eye sight is incredibly terrible. I am not functional at all with out my glasses. The standard eye chart you read at the optometrist/ophthalmologist's office is not my friend. In fact, I have not been able to see anything on that eye chart probably since high school. Because I am extremely near sighted, I have been told for years always to be aware of flashing lights or floaters as these may be signs my retina has detached. As you become nearsighted, your eyeball elongates stretching the retina so, when you are incredibly short sighted your eyeball is super elongated and your retina becomes thinner and thinner. This is the shape of my eyeball. The retina is where light is absorbed, converted to neural signals, and then sent to the brain via the optic nerve to form a picture. If the retina were to detach, this whole process will be non-existent which would result in a loss of vision.
Last November, my retina detached. I had no symptoms whatsoever. The only reason I even found out was that I wanted new glasses. My frames at the time were not as exciting to me anymore. When you wear the same pair every day eventually they get old, it is a fact of life. So, I strolled into Costco Eye Center one day at 4 pm for a routine check up. Before I sat down in the chair with the optometrist, I did a few small standard test, one of which was to take a picture of my eye. The optometrist was real quiet and just looked and looked at my photos. Even I could see from where I was sitting that the picture of my left eye looked different than the other. I asked her what was going on with my eye; she said she wanted to know too. Uhh...I knew it could not be good. She told me my eyes needed to be dilated so she could take a look at my retina. A quick look and phone calls were urgently made. Next thing I knew I had an appointment at 8 am the next day to see the retina specialist in town. Again my eye was dilated, and he concurred to the fact I had three tears in my retina causing some fluid to pass through. Three options were given to me: to do nothing, to laser seal the tears which could be done in office, or eye surgery. To do nothing was not a choice at all, I value my eyesight too much. Eye surgery was too extreme so, the laser was the ideal choice. About 20 minutes later I was sitting on a stool, my chin in the chin cup and a laser blasting away at my eye. It was not a painful procedure but not the most comfortable either. My left eye was a little red for the next couple days but other than that all was normal. A follow up after a couple of weeks went by showed the procedure was a success.
Two weeks ago I was chit chatting at work and started to see lights. With the history of my eye, I knew I should get it checked out as soon as possible. The next day I was in with the ophthalmologists. I did not have any new tears in my retina which was fantastic, but this time the pressures in my eye were high. Pressures in the eye are measured to show the risk of glaucoma. Mine were elevated meaning I have a high chance of developing glaucoma. There are five standard test I went through to check for it. Tonometry (the pressure of the eye), ophthalmoscopy (for the shape and color of the optic nerve, perimetry), perimetry (the complete field of vision test), gonioscopy (the angle in the eye where the iris meets the cornea), and pachymetry (the thickness of the cornea). I completed all these tests, and at the time of this video, I was still awaiting the result of one last test. The ophthalmologist told me he had expected the final test, which I completed that day after talking to him in office, to be normal. My outcome looks great. I was told to follow up with another ophthalmologist at my next location in about three more months. If I were to need treatment, it would mean eye drops for the rest of my life. These eye drops do have a horrible side effect; they cause your lashes to grow long and thick. I mean it would be just terrible to have long, lush lashes but if it is a treatment, I need to go through I suppose I will just have to suffer. Isn't that THE best side effect to have??
