My experience with Retinal Detachment

 My father has invited me to write in his blog about retinal detachment. 

So what were my symptoms of retinal detachment? Initially I had a burst of floater activity in my left eye. But they weren't your everday common floaters, they were like small black specs that reminded me of mosquitos floating freely around my eye. Next I had several flashes of the light in the corner of my left eye, the left corner to be exact. This occurred usually when I would look to the right. These flashes are hard to describe, it was as if my eye were taking in some trauma, you know when you get poked in the eye and you close your eyes and you see some momentary burst of activity? That's what it was like.

There are other kinds of flashes of light I also noticed. Chiefly there would be quick flashes that looked like tiny electric bolts around the left corner of my eye. There was also something else in the corner of the eye. sometimes it appeared to be small black dot, and others it was a flashing dot. After these events I went to an eye doctor to get a diagnosis. Of course  before this I went on youtube and researched if this were indeed the worst case scenario, which is obviously the retinal detachment. In any case the eye doctor who was available could not find any damage to my retina but as a precaution he sent me over to a retinal specialist. This retinal specialist also was unable to find any tear or damage to my left eye's retina so I was relieved at the time.

In the following week it appeared that their initial diagnosis was correct. My symptoms faded away and I was seemingly back to normal. Unfortunately a week later I had yet another burst of floater activity. This time there were even more black specks that entered my purview. And even more frightening the black dot had returned and it appeared to have grown. I also noticed that when I moved my left eye to look at something towards the right, the black dot stretched, like it was some sort of torn muscular tendon, It was all black of course but it is something to note.

The progression this time was much more quicker. What I was looking at was the retinal detaching. This time when I went back to the retinal specialist he was able to see it as well. It is my belief that perhaps my retina appear to be fine in the two weeks prior and it had only begun to detach much later on. There is something else to note. When the detachment was exposed directly to bright light or sunlight for that matter, it appeared like a clear transparent water balloon. This was made much more clearer once my pupils were dilated. My assumption is I was looking directly at the detachment itself. Thankfully I was able to get surgery done on the eye, but I have yet to remove my eye patch so I'm unsure what state of vision my left eye currently has.