Collapsed Eyeball

Freak me out!  Okay, so collapsed eyeball sounds sort of more extreme than it needs to, but not really.  It is exactly what is happening and it can be very serious and it can be no big deal.  Nothing in between. 

The biggest reason I’m blogging about this… Because no one told me that what was happening in my eye was a big deal until I looked it up a second time, called my eye doctor and they seemed to calmly panic and made me come in for an emergency appointment, right then, that’s when I finally figured it was a big deal, a week or more later from when it started.

What symptoms was I looking up?  Flashes of light, like lightning, in one eye.

I didn’t even consider the increased amount of floaters.  But I should have.

Why was I not all that concerned and let it go for a week?  Because I was told a while ago that floaters are natural and occur more in older people.  And that is what I am.  Older people.

No one said anything about lightening in one eye. 

I have migraines, have since childhood, they are preceded by visual disturbances, mostly in my right eye.  I was half thinking that these flashes were just a new version of the visual disturbances that I have before a headache. 

When the flashes went for a week or more and no headache came I knew that they weren’t that. But I still didn’t think that they were any big deal.  I thought maybe it was a sign I was strokin’ out but heck I was still up movin’, workin’ and nearly thinkin’ clearly, so I was good.

What did I find out when I finally looked it up on the right website (the wrong one at the beginning of the week told me what I knew already, floaters and old age go hand in hand,  they threw flashes of light into the same bag) ?

The new website said, that yes, floaters are natural and with age they tend to increase, age means some time after forty.  But that if they increase rapidly in one eye, or if you have flashes of light in one eye like lightening, or if you have a curtain of nothing in your field of vision, then you could be in danger of a retinal tear or detachment which can be fixed and if not fixed could cause blindness.

Uh yeah, blindness in one eye, not my eye-dea of something I could work around.  So I called the eye doctor.

The eye doctor phone receptionist calmly panicked after she found out why I called, which was after she updated my records, real quick, and found out that I’m just a plain ol’ white girl that only speaks English, hasn’t changed her phone number and hasn’t moved.

How can you tell a person is calmly panicking?  You know you’ve called on a Friday.  Any other time you call for any sort of doctors appointment that you don’t already think is an emergency and even the ones where you do call hoping to get seen that day, like when you’re asthmatic and are having a hard time breathing, you know you really aren’t going to get a same day appointment.  When you call on a Friday at three, you definitely know you’re not. But she took my information and then proceeded to say that I could get a same day in Federal Way. I had her repeat the phrase ‘same day’ because I was in disbelief.  The appointment was in forty-five minutes, uh Tacoma is forty-five minutes away, add twenty more for Federal Way.  She wouldn’t let it go and just give me an appointment for Monday in Tacoma. 

Tacoma was indeed full but what she was going to do was message them and let them figure out when to squeeze me in. And would I be at this number? 

All that and I knew it was serious.  I’ve been gasping for air and they haven’t worked that hard to get me seen.

The phone rang from Tacoma within five minutes.  We did some chit chat about the symptoms I was having.  The tech put me on hold, came back on, told me to be there in thirty. I told him I couldn’t do that. He told me to come any way and they would deal with me when I got there because Urgent care (farther downtown) wasn’t’ open yet.

At this point I am trying not to panic.  I don’t do well if I can’t convince myself it is no big deal and this time I’m having a hard time convincing myself that it is no big deal.   Death isn’t eminent, but clearly blindness could be.

I know there are a lot of blind people out there leading great lives and they’re blind in both eyes.  But of all the things just shy of death and actually neck and neck with death that I don’t think I could really work around, remain a nice person and deal with, is blindness.   I know a guy who was an electrician and then went blind, afterward he was still doing electrical work.  But his wife was his eyes for him while he worked. 

Not that I make a whoppin’ lot of money to support a family off of what I do, but Dirt has no idea what he is looking at when he is looking at ninety percent of the plants on the farm, and his skills of description… frightening.  I have daughters that confuse begonias with gladiolas with hydrangeas and it isn’t cuz they’re old or strokin’ out.  I really do not want to find out what my life would be like without sight.  Hearing would be a bugger to do without, but really a lot of silence could be nice.  My feet?  Wheel chairs with fat tires for mud.  Paralysis?  Read books 24/7  could be a dream come true.  Blind even in one eye. er. NO.

They can fix a retinal tear in the doctor’s office (they didn’t tell me that, that was on the web site) so I ask Dirt to drive me, I don’t even like driving home from a regular eye appointment, he was only going to help me do stuff any way.

Off we go.  Not panicking but moving quickly. Read about God on the way in, definitely helpful. Perspective and peace.

On the way my one big floater, the big fat spider with a bum leg, that has shown up in the last day or two, after the lightening, is now joined by a flock of flea beetles.  Interesting.

I get checked in, sit down, pull the book out of my purse, locate the page I left off at and my name is called.  Dirt asks to come too, he likes learning new stuff and this whole eye adventure is turning out to be interesting already.

The assistant has me do the highway sign and puff of air thing at the machine in the hallway.  Then we go into the typical eye appointment room and she does a lot of things, things I didn’t think they would be doing.  Eye chart stuff, luckily no “is one better or two?” type stuff, I hate that.  Reading letters I can’t see is bad enough, choosing which not-being-able-to-see is worse or better, unbelievably stupid and frustrating.

But then, after my eyes are sufficiently dilated, the real stuff with the doc begins.  Intense.  Oh just before my eyes are dilated enough she give me a sheet of information to read until she comes back.  It says pretty much everything I’ve already read, emphasis on the floater activity, they even mention the “flea beetle” ones.

Doctor Kim comes back in and the real stuff begins.  Intense looking up this direction and down, and this way and that way and then similar stuff while she is at a machine.  She mentions that she can see my spider.  Then she says yep, sure enough I have collapsing eye ball. 

Okay, she used technical terms and it isn’t the whole eye ball that is collapsing it is the gel inside, it is liquefying with old age and falling forward, collapsing.  That part is okay, it comes with age, it is why I can see my floaters better right now and why the flashes of light.  The tricky part and why they had me come in is that during that normal aging process if the sticky stuff should happen to pull on the retina and tear it, then I could have problems.  But so far my eye ball is collapsing just fine.