In Which I Find Out My Eye Has Suffered Permanent Damage

Remember that bit about me hitting myself in the right eye with a penny a month or two ago? Allow me to refresh your memory.



Yeah.



Well back on December 26th--in the middle of my European vacation--something happened. I'd been working on troubleshooting some tech problems my mother-in-law had been having, when suddenly I noticed I couldn't see right out of the middle of my right eye.



At first I thought it was a migraine, but it was limited to one eye, and I never got a headache. I tried to sleep it off, but it didn't get better.


That's not something you want to have happen to you when you're in thousands of miles from your home. I had no idea what to do, so I just prayed it would get better--or not get worse--and I stopped wearing contact lenses.



It has gotten better somewhat, but the first thing I did when my plane landed in Boston was call my eye doctor. He looked at it, then sent me to a retinal specialist, and I went down there this morning. They dilated my eyes into oblivion and shone every bright light they could find. What a pleasant experience. They also took detailed pictures of my retina.



It seems like when I hit my eye with that cursed penny, it caused some of the vitreous fluid to detach, and it injured a very small part of my retina. (I'm not an eye specialist, folks--this is just what I took away from the meeting.) The good news is that it's not going to get worse. The bad news is that it's not going to get better.



I'm choosing to focus on the good news. I'm attached to being able to see out of my right eye, and as cool as it would be to wear an eye-patch all the time, I've decided I'd rather avoid it. It's been three weeks or so since I started noticing this problem, and I've become quite used to it. Basically, it's like I looked at a bright light and then looked away, and I've got this tiny afterimage of that light hovering in my vision.



Honestly, I don't notice it now except when it's bright outside. I can still read with the eye, see with the eye, do everything I used to be able to do with it. I just have to accept that little afterimage is going to be there, and stop worrying about it. That's a big deal for me--being able to know it's okay, and it's not going to get worse.



So. That's my Friday for you. And that's all I have to say about that.