The eyes have it

Several weeks ago I was weeding my gardens and throwing down mulch, wondering how much longer we were going to be sweating in the oppressive summer heat.

I actually don't mind sweating. Sometimes, I even like sweating. I gives me a sense a accomplishment, like when I complete my 90-minute recumbent bicycle fitness routine, or when finishing up in the garden for the day.

So when I quit mulching the other day and went inside to cool down and watch a little TV, a little black dot surreptitiously floated across the vision of my right eye.

Great. An eye floater. How annoying.

I've had floaters before, but they usually disappear in a few moments or so.

Not this one. A couple days later, it was still there, criss-crossing across my field of vision and stubbornly refusing to go away. It was particularly aggravating against bright backgrounds, like a clear blue sky on a sunny day, or reading a book printed on bright white pages. There it was.

So I made an appointment with my optometrist, Dr. Cathy Fulp. Cathy's been my eye doctor for probably 25 years or so, ever since she had her own practice here in Lexington.

I like Cathy. She's as nice as they come, and more importantly, she knows that I'm the squeamish eye guy. I hate messing with my eyes. I hate getting drops in them to dilate my pupils. I don't like looking into optometric eyepieces when they almost touch my eyeball. Eeeewwwww.

Cathy knows this. So when I made my appointment with Triad Eye Associates (where she now practices with several other doctors), I requested that Cathy, and only Cathy, check out my eye. She knows how to put me at ease in the optometry chair.

Meanwhile, I made the mistake of Googling eye floaters in an ill-advised self-diagnosis. Suddenly, I'm reading stuff about detached retinas (requiring immediate eye surgery), macular degeneration and other causes of potential impending blindness.

I was on edge. Worried. Crap.

But when it came time for my appointment, Cathy almost instantly put me at ease. An associate put drops in my right eye, per Cathy's instructions. Then Cathy came in. She had me read an eye chart. I peered through eyepieces. She did an eye check with some kind of magic hand-held magnifier (or something) that lets her look inside my eyeball. One machine even took pictures of the inside of my eye.

She had me describe my floater. In my case, it looked like a small black doughnut that was hollow in the center and partially fuzzied up my vision in that eye.

"That makes sense," she said. "Everything else looks good."

What I had, said Cathy, was something called vitreous detachment. This is when the vitreous fluid in the eye begins to deteriorate as we age and floaters develop. There's a 70 percent chance that 70 year olds will get this. It's basically harmless and, with luck, a persistent floater can eventually move out of your field of vision over time.

It's not a more serious retinal detachment, which is usually accompanied by flashes or streaks of light. Then you might have issues. Like eye surgery.

You don't want to mess around with your eyes. I made the appointment to make sure there was nothing more serious going on.

Take it from me – the squeamish eye guy.