Eyes
Well yesterday a co-worker invited me to a noon in-service being presented by a paranormal researcher. Near the end during the question and answer period I was a little bored so I started playing a game on my PDA. As I started playing I noticed that there was an area of my vision, kind of crescent shaped and off to the left, where I couldn’t really focus. Initially I thought it was some kind of weird glare or something, but when nothing I did seemed to make it go away I started experimenting. I can’t say if it was in both eyes or not because closing my eyes didn’t seem to make it go away. When both were closed it showed up as sort of an after imagine, the kind you might get after looking at something bright for too long.
Of course the joke that everyone came up with was that sense it was a presentation on the paranormal that it must have been a ghost. One of my friends asked if the blurry spot made any movement or tried to talk to me, I told him, “No, but it was weeping blood…” I noticed when I started playing on my PDA, but it could have been around for longer than that, and it lasted long after I stopped. In total I’d estimate it was present for aroud 45 minutes before it gradually drifted of the left side of my vision and out of sight. Obviously anytime you have trouble seeing there is a tendency to panic, at least a little bit. I panicked to the extent of making an appointment with my optometrist. I figured he may not be able to tell me what’s happening, but he should at least have enough experience to tell me whether I should escalate things. The appointment ended up being at 3:30 and while I was waiting for it, I think the blurriness re-appeared, but only at the very outside edge of my left visual field, so I can’t be sure.
Well any way the optometrist dilated my eyes and took pictures of my retina. He didn’t see anything, and kept saying that you could spend 1000 of dollars tracking down something like this. Which I think was meant to be comforting but obviously wasn’t. The dilation produced in a certain sense a similar but far more powerful condition to the one I had just been complaining about. Driving the few short blocks to my home gave me a massive headache, and when I got there and tried to get on my computer I found I couldn’t focus on anything smaller than a bottle cap, so reading was out of the question. Eventually I just laid down hoping the whole thing would pass. Eventually it all did, but it was still a pretty hellish day.
And I thought it was frustrating when my computer malfunctioned…
Of course the joke that everyone came up with was that sense it was a presentation on the paranormal that it must have been a ghost. One of my friends asked if the blurry spot made any movement or tried to talk to me, I told him, “No, but it was weeping blood…” I noticed when I started playing on my PDA, but it could have been around for longer than that, and it lasted long after I stopped. In total I’d estimate it was present for aroud 45 minutes before it gradually drifted of the left side of my vision and out of sight. Obviously anytime you have trouble seeing there is a tendency to panic, at least a little bit. I panicked to the extent of making an appointment with my optometrist. I figured he may not be able to tell me what’s happening, but he should at least have enough experience to tell me whether I should escalate things. The appointment ended up being at 3:30 and while I was waiting for it, I think the blurriness re-appeared, but only at the very outside edge of my left visual field, so I can’t be sure.
Well any way the optometrist dilated my eyes and took pictures of my retina. He didn’t see anything, and kept saying that you could spend 1000 of dollars tracking down something like this. Which I think was meant to be comforting but obviously wasn’t. The dilation produced in a certain sense a similar but far more powerful condition to the one I had just been complaining about. Driving the few short blocks to my home gave me a massive headache, and when I got there and tried to get on my computer I found I couldn’t focus on anything smaller than a bottle cap, so reading was out of the question. Eventually I just laid down hoping the whole thing would pass. Eventually it all did, but it was still a pretty hellish day.
And I thought it was frustrating when my computer malfunctioned…
posted by DireKobold at 2:21 PM
4 Comments:
I started having something like that a couple of years ago, where these things that are basically "floaters" but a bit bigger show up when I shift my eyes, esp. when looking toward the light. I never had them like this, so it was a bit disconcerting, but the optometrist said it was pretty common. I don't know if yours is the same, but it never hurts to get your eyes checked.
Sounds to me like the aura phase of a migraine. I get moon shaped, fuzzy vision loss that recedes peripherally about once every 6 months, in one or both eyes. Then bam, a migraine. And if I remember right, maybe once, the migraine didn't happen.
It was Patrick Swayze trying to get you to contact Demi Moore ...
If that's the case, get an exorcist, not an opthalmologist.
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