Monday, October 18, 2021

Don't Get Old

Grandma used to tell me that.

I always replied, the alternative isn't appealing. Dying young. 

I understand what she was getting on about. Getting old sucks. Take my right eyeball. Please. 

It's 30 years older than the rest of me.

About two years ago I noticed a jelly in the lower hemisphere of my right eye. I told the eye doctor about it and he said the vitreous humor, the gel inside your eyeball, can thicken in parts. It often happens right next to the retina and can detach it in the worst case. He told me to watch for flashing or shimmering and colors. Those were warning signs. The flashing and colors came and went away last summer, replaced by a giant jelly covering 2/3rds of my lower vision and warps and distorts the upper third To add to my pleasure, a bunch of capillaries decided to die in the right eye.

Closing my left eye is a nightmare of perception. I spy, with my wretched right eye, a world from the bottom of a pond filled with frog's eggs and jellyfish tentacles.

My amazing brain compensates so my total field of vision is intact. I only experience a superstition of something wrong. A shadow of doubt that didn't exist before. Especially the right peripheral vision. A continual nagging tug from the right, which is now Void.

Don't get old.



2 comments:

  1. No treatment for that? I got my eyes examined last January. My eyesight has improved, I told the doctor, I no longer need cheaters to read. He did the exam and said yes, your eyesight has improved but that's because you are developing cataracts. great. I was supposed to see an opthamologist in August to prepare for cataract surgery end of this year but I haven't done it as I'm not seeing any deterioration in my eyesight yet. But if cataracts isn't bad enough, I'm also developing age related macular degeneration. You know, the stuff that eventually makes you go blind. So now I wear sunglasses everytime I go out and take eye vitamins. They're working on a treatment so I hope they get one soon.

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