Lazy, lazy...

Nothing terribly exciting happening since Shawna was doing laps in the hot tub.  


Well, unless you include the flashes and floaters (F&Fs) in my left eye that caused me to go to my regular Ophthalmologist on Thursday. He had the unmitigated gall to cancel my trip to Arizona to visit Tim and Charlize because he insisted on laser surgery ASAP. And no big changes in pressure (airplanes are equivalent to being on a 8,000 to 10,000 ft mountain) so no airplanes for a while.  


Anyway, my F&Fs started sort of Tuesday night--you know, the kind of thing where you say, "Are these real flashes or am I imagining it?"   Maybe the flashes were causing me to think they were real by Wednesday.  But when I woke up on Thursday morning and there was this big dark floater covering about a third of my left eye's vision, I decided it was time to see the doc.  


That's when he cancelled my plans for the weekend and sent me to a laser surgeon "no later than tomorrow."  


Well, the laser surgeon is a well qualified MD. Very nice and very gentle until he started launching his photon torpedos into my left eye. OMG, talk about seeing the light!  


He said something about my fair Irish skin and how it meant the retina in my eye also lacked some typical pigmentation.  That lack meant he had to carpet bomb the tear in my retina to get everything to stick properly!  Yowza!  


I spent a quiet weekend holding my head vertical per the doctor's orders, even when sleeping.  All those years flying coach class means I have an acquired skill that helps out at times like these.  


So what was going on?  My left eye is apparently in the process of the vitreous fluid collapsing--a very normal thing for those of us in the 60-65 age group. When it does, it sometimes tears the retina.  The laser surgery is to weld the retina and stop the tearing.  The tear can lead to partial blindness. And, the tear exposes the back of the retina to the fluid in the eye and that can lead to retinal detachment--aka blindness. Serious stuff. In my case, I added a slight complication because the tear also ripped a blood vessel. The large dark floater I saw on Thursday morning was apparently a big blob of blood floating in the eye.  


So far, I haven't detected flashes at all. Floaters do come and go and my eye is 'cloudy' so I talked to the doc this morning. His assessment is that there was a lot of blood in the eye and it would make the fluid cloudy  but the blood will absorb and disappear in a few days. But, to be safe, he will see me tomorrow just to 'check things out.'  The fact he did not insist on today gave me some confidence the cloudiness is not a big deal given the nature of my retinal tear.  


Shauna keeps rolling along. It is so hard to believe that dog is 17.5 years old!  She bounds up and down the stairs to the dog run. And, she does her circle dance when food is being prepared.  Just an amazing dog!  


The weather this past week has been really strange. Rain a week ago. We don't get no stinkin' rain between April and October!  We did last week.  And, temperatures in the 90s over the weekend and into today.  For us, 90s is incredibly hot...


Ciao, 


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