Floaters!

Everybody gets floaters to some extent, apparently.

Little artefacts, interference in your eyesight. Floating blobs.

In the last couple of months I’ve been getting more of them than before, particularly in bright light.

Official advice says this is common in people as they get older, and is likely to be either the vitreous humour slightly pulling away from the retina (not so bad) or retina damage (bad, very bad).

This is a concern for me because my right eye is bung, almost blind, always has been. So I need to make sure my left is okay.

So I went and had an eye test yesterday.

The lady was able to look into my eye and see the floaters — all is okay for now, it’s not retina damage.

She said that theoretically it can be treated, but in practice the treatment is worse than the cure, so it’s not worth it.

But I should seek urgent attention if I see flashing lights or colour strobing.

And… to avoid causing major damage, I should avoid action sports which might involve a sudden jolt to the head: sky-diving, driving racing cars, bungie jumping. I don’t think this will be a problem for me!

My eyesight is otherwise good, particularly at long range — though given the amount of computer work I do, I should be considering reading glasses. I’d already noticed I’ve started having problems seeing things like the fineprint on food packaging.

All part of growing older I suppose, but the eye test itself was pretty quick, easy and painless. Which is good, as I’ve been asked to go back in six months to check nothing’s getting worse.