Floaters

Entry for 28 October 2007:

A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly developed a weird eye condition commonly called “floaters”: Coming home from a performance at the Star Folk Club on a Thursday night, I suddenly noticed strange threads in the right visual field of my right eye. I initially took these to be cobwebs or long, knotted hairs hanging down from my hat. I kept trying to brush them out of the way, without success. When I described them to Diane, she called them “floaters”, which I then looked up on the internet. Apparently, the vitreous part of my eye has shrunk enough to pull away from my retina; these are bits of crud that result from process. There is also some chance of retinal detachment, which could lead to blindness. When I phoned my GP, I was given an appointment the following week. When I finally got in to see him, he sent straight over to Gartnavel Hospital to have it evaluated. After a couple of hours waiting in the Eye Casualty Department, a nice ophthalmologist ran me through several tests and declared my retina to be undamaged. Maybe they would go away in a couple of months, she said… or maybe not. The floaters are more a nuisance than anything else, distracting me when I’m trying to read. Because they are constantly moving, my visual system is having trouble editing them out of reality, in case they turn out to be real. In the meantime, they are a source of entertainment during long, boring meetings. A surreal experience!