Post #662788 by kraken on Tue, Jan 1, 2013 12:38 AM

Wow! Only 105 miles from me--that's pretty close by
California standards. In which direction?

My apologies for having no broken bones in my history,
but I did get a concussion once: rear-ended on freeway.
It was a minor concussion; I drove the two miles directly
to my insurance agent's office and only at her insistence
trekked to the emergency room, where the doctor said
a concussion it probably was, but nothing much could
be done about it.

'Twas a week later that eye trouble cropped up. Things
began appearing in my vision like seaweed floating in a
tidepool, and turning my head suddenly produced multi-
colored sparks at the sides of my vision. Back to the ER,
where the physician on duty tested and questioned me
for about 40 minutes, finally saying he hadn't any idea
what was causing this so I should be consulting an
ophthalmologist.

This I promptly did, in fear and trembling. Before I had
finished listing all my symptoms, without any examination
at all, he stopped me and said "I see 3 or 4 cases of this
a day." He added that there was little that could be done
about it, but that it would probably go away in a number
of months. Turned out he was right.

The medical people on this thread probably recognize this
already as vitreous detachment: the transparent jelly inside
my eyeball had come loose from my retina. The gap
between them in places caused the black floating seaweed
effect; the loose jelly rubbing on the retina gave the
appearance of colored sparks.

My real regret was that something so common (another
ophthalmologist confirmed that it was about the most
common ailment he encountered) was unknown to the
ER physician.