Floaters and Flashers

Nobody tells you that as you age, your body will fall apart and rebel on you in ways you never contemplated.

Four years ago, I developed a floater in my left eye. Apparently this is an accumulation of old cells that floats around in your eye gel.

Mine was very thick and long, shaped a lot like a sausage. It was most apparent when I looked at the sky or a white background.

I have always thought it came about because nine months earlier I had gone on an antihistamine and, at the behest of my physician, stayed on it all that time.

The result was I felt a lot better but I developed this eye thing, so I stopped taking the antihistamine.

The floater eventually decreased in size. Now it is a wispy thing, a thin line that I only notice rarely.

Two years ago, I started having flashers in my eye. I was scared witless by these flashes of light that simply occurred. Sparklies, I called them. At first they were so imperceptible I thought I was simply imagining it, and then one night I woke with a virtual firework explosion going on in my eye.

We called the emergency room and they hunted up an eye care doctor, who saw me at 6:30 a.m. and told me I had torn my retina. It did not require surgery, but it did require me to start using fake tears every night and every morning (and sometimes in between).

The flashers continue intermittently.

Today I was working and I sneezed. The lights flashed in my eye. Disco lights, I call them now. A line of sparkle here, there, like one of those disco balls rotating in a John Travolta movie.

The sensation lasts about a minute. I always go and use my artificial tears right away, once things clear up so I can walk.

They don't prepare you for this. No one told me that as I grew old, my eyes would do these weird things.

Just wait until I start telling you about my white hair.