Now That's A Sight For Sore Eyes

I got up one morning recently with something in my eye. At first It was an interference against the folds of the curtains, and although I couldn't feel anything, I tried vainly washing my eye with cold water.

There were more floaters than usual, and when later that day my wife was parking the car, I was convinced someone was playing with a torch in the back - turning it off and on. I waited for my wife to say something to the girls about flashing torches when mummy's trying to park. She didn't.

I look at the world through a net curtain and a leafy houseplant. Some of the dots I can almost focus on. What do you call a floater that doesn't float, but hangs there swaying in the eddies and tides of the aqueous humor? Eventually I called the hospital.

I've been through this before: Sit here, look up, this will sting, put your chin here, look here there and everywhere but concentrate on this earlobe. Multi coloured lamps, lenses, strange devices of uncertain origin all brought to inspect my forcibly dilated eyes. Sometimes for a moment my retina floats into view, a maze of rivers streams and tributaries strewn across the arid desert plains.

"Has there been any trauma or fall? Sneezing or coughing fits? A fight?" Alas, no.

Somehow in my sleep I have managed to tear my retina. Something went pop. "We will need to seal around the tear with laser treatment to ensure it gets no worse. There is nothing to worry about."

Ah, Doctors. There is never anything to worry about. And it could be worse.

Because it's affecting my right eye. The one damaged previously by a series of dendritic ulcers on the cornea a few years ago. The one with double vision all by itself and an interesting game it can play with street lights.

"Have you ever suffered from cold sores?" was the question then, with the same answer.

I'd give my right eye for a decent right eye.