Monday, October 23, 2006

Oh, say can you see...

From the "this could only happen to YOU" medical files of yours truly:

I went to the eye doctor a week ago for a routine eye exam. I had noticed that my vision was a bit blurrier than usual, so I just figured that I needed a stronger prescription.

So the doctor and I went through the "can you see this?...how about now? what looks better to you, this one...or this one?" routine until I was looking through lenses that were supposed to have me at 20/20 vision. There was just one problem, though: my right eye was still blurry. When I covered my right eye, I could read the second row from the bottom. When I covered my left eye, though, I struggled to read the third row from the top. He told me that he wanted me to come back in a week so he could dialate my right eye and see what was going on.

I went back this weekend for the eye dialation (which, by the way, just feels WEIRD) and he used a whole bunch of REALLY bright lights to look at my retina. And he found...something.

Don't ask me what, because I still don't know. HE still doesn't know. But he did see something back there that's causing the vision in my right eye to be blurred. "It's not, like, cancer or anything, right?" I asked.

"I don't think so," he said. "But that's why I want you to go see a retinal specialist."

I asked several more questions, including "What caused it?" "Can it be fixed?" and "How serious is this?", to which I kept getting variations of "I don't know, but that's why I want you to see a specialist." He asked me if I'd recently suffered any kind of blow or trauma to the eye. Not to my recollection, I told him. "Hmm," he said.

"Hmmm?!" What is THAT?

The doctor's office is calling the specialist's office themselves, so I don't know yet when I have to go. I'll let you know.

3 comments:

keesh said...

I will be praying for you. For a minute I thought you were going to say that your vision had returned to 20/20...hope you have good insurance! Keep us posted!

Jen said...

Yeah, not glaucoma. There's something THERE that shouldn't be there, didn't sound like a glaucoma thing.

Crap, now that's something else on my list to worry about. I'm too young for that, right?! And that doesn't affect the RETINA, does it?

Jen said...

OK I just research glaucoma and I'm pretty sure it's not that. He said specifically that it's something wrong with the retina and glaucoma affects the optic nerve, which, although it's CONNECTED to the retina, is still different. So I hope it's not that. That would suck.