whew, I guess

[cellio]

Last Thursday I started seeing "floaters" in one eye (the good one, natch). That can mean nothing (it happens as you age), or it can be an early sign of retinal damage. Friday morning I saw an opthamologist (not my usual one, but one who was available), and she said she didn't see any damage but she couldn't get a good look due to quirks of my eyes. She said to assume it's normal and call if things get worse. Sunday I started seeing cloudiness in that eye and called, and she said to come in the next day. So Monday I saw yet another opthamologist (again, luck of the draw), who gave what felt to me like a cursory exam and then said things are fine. He was rather dismissive and rude (it was clear he thought I was over-reacting), and I intend to complain to my own doctor about him. He attributed the cloudiness to some drops they'd given me on Friday, and said the effects can last five or six days (which they didn't tell me on Friday).

Yesterday I called my own doctor to discuss the continuing problem. She said the symptoms are consistent with a torn retina, and sent me to a retinal specialist, who I saw this morning. He performed a thorough exam, including taking pictures of my retinas with some high-tech gizmo where they tell you not to move your eyes for several minutes (easier said than done).

He found no tears, no bleeding, and no signs of fluid accumulating behind the retina (which would happen if there were a tear that he couldn't see for some reason). He believes that the vitreous fluid in that eye has detatched from the retina, which happens to everyone eventually but usually a lot later. While the retina detatching from whatever is behind it is very bad, the vitreous detatching from the retina is nothing special.

Ok, I said, but what about my impeded vision? He thinks the cloudiness is actually another floater (obviously a less-dense one), and that eventually floaters tend to settle to the bottom of the eye and/or your brain gets used to them and you stop noticing them. Either way, all I can do is wait. I see him again in six weeks. Meanwhile, he showed me how to test my peripheral vision; I'm to do that daily and call immediately if there's a change.

So the good news is that there's no obvious damage, but in a way, the bad news is that there's no obvious damage. If there were a small tear, that would give them something to fix. But on the other hand, I'm just as glad not to be facing eye surgery this week, as that always has the potential to end badly.

While annoying, the floaters don't affect my distance vision in any noticable way. However, they affect my close vision quite a bit. Reading is a challenge, particularly against white backgrounds (paper or online). Larger fonts help, as do reverse video and lowering the contrast. (A yellow background is better than a white one, for instance.) Alas, many web sites (including the company wiki, but maybe I can get that fixed) and software packages impose black text on white backgrounds with nothing you can do about it. I've already got monitor brightness cranked way down; I'm going to need to figure out what else I can do.

If the problem doesn't go away and it's deemed serious enough, there is something the specialist can do for me -- but it's risky. The vitreous fluid doesn't serve a function other than to be there (keeping the various bits of your eye away from each other, I gather). There is a surgical procedure where they can remove the gunked-up fluid and replace it with something artificial. There is, however, a risk that it can affect vision in the wrong direction. I don't know the specifics; it's early to be thinking about that. (It can also cause glaucoma, but I already have glaucoma so I don't know if I have to care.)

The doctor I saw today seemed to be very ept and personable. He answered the questions I thought to ask at the time, and used teacher's aids to explain what was going on (a model of the eye). He was recording a running commentary as he examined me, so he could send it to my own doctor, which meant I got to hear everything he thought important during the exam. (When the recorder was off he then translated med-speak for me without my having to ask.) So far, kudos to this doctor.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you didn't have a retinal tear. Still nasty to have the floaters' interfering with your vision. For what it's worth, you can force Firefox to use the fonts and colors that work best for you. In Firefox 1.5.0.4, here's the pathway:

Tools > Options > Content

Then, in the Fonts & Colors mini-panel, click "Advanced" and in the new dialog box unclick "Allow pages to choose their own fonts." All of my pages display in large Georgia type, because it's easier to read.

There's also an extension for Firefox (http://readeasily.mozdev.org/) which allows you to right-click on any page and disable the style used. (I use it most frequently on LJ pages where the blogger has chosen a patterned background that makes it almost impossible to read. Two clicks and the styles are diabled, rendering the page readable.

[cellio]

Thanks! I'm currently using Mozilla, but that extension is strong motivation to change.

[jducoeur]

At this point, all the really interesting development is on Firefox, so I would encourage you to switch over to it.

On top of the other suggestions, I recall that there's another plugin for Firefox that actually lets you impose your *own* specific styles for particular sites. (The CSS equivalent of Greasemonkey, which allows you to add specialized Javascript to particular pages.) So depending on how much work you want to go to, it's possible using Firefox to format most pages the way you really want them...

[cellio]

Ooh, that sounds very handy! (You don't happen to remember its name, do you? Apparently there are lots of extensions. :-) )

What is Greasemonkey? I've heard it mentioned a few times, always in a Firefox context. Is it a base extension that I need for the others to work, or is it something built into Firefox that I don't need to explicitly worry about?

[jducoeur]

I don't remember the name of the CSS one offhand, but I'll see if I can dig it up. (It wasn't personally interesting, so I didn't pay close attention when it was announced.)

Greasemonkey is indeed a base extension. It goes like this. Firefox is inherently very configurable -- you can add extensions that plug into the "XUL" layer, which basically extend and customize the UI as desired. This makes it relatively straightforward to modify the *browser* as desired, but doesn't help much with specific *pages*.

Greasemonkey is a clever extension that provides the necessary glue to modify pages. Once you have GM installed, you can add site- and page-specific Javascript customizations to make those pages do exactly what you want. There are a fair number of them available for LiveJournal, of which I've tried a few. (The one that adds "instant comment" boxes was interesting; the one that elides the initial "Log In Now" downright useful, albeit in a trivial way.)