I know you are not my doctor. I will be going to the doctor about this soon but until then I’d like to have a better idea of what might be causing this.
I have 20/15 vision. My boyfriend jokingly calls me eagle-eye and tells me I should fly planes in the air force. I’ve always had better than perfect vision but now, as of 2 days ago, I have a black floater in my right eye. If I look to the side too quickly a tiny black spot floats into my vision and then floats back out again. My eye feels weird too, almost like there is a tiny piece of wadded up paper towel in there, but that might just be because I keep jerking my eyes about checking for that floating spot. The floating spot and the weird paper towelly feeling get worse when looking at computer monitors despite the fact that I’ve turned down the brightness and contrast on every monitor I use.
What the heck is this floating thing? Is there any way to get rid of it? Does anyone else have this problem? Is my eye going to burst into flames or something?
I’m going to the doctor this weekend, I promise! I had just hoped that I would be able to find someone here who would say, “Oh yeah, that happened to me. You should expect this, that, and the other when you go to the doctor.”
I work in ophthalmology, IANAD/N, this is not medical advice. I wouldn’t worry as much about a single floater except for the other symptom you report, and I’m not sure what could be causing that symptom.
Sometimes a floater means nothing. Sometimes, especially if there was a “flash” that preceded the floater’s existence, it could mean a small detachment of the “gel” from the back of the inside of the eye (probably not a problem) or a detachment of part of the retina (definitely a problem).
I suspect you’re going to have a dilated eye exam at the very least. They may want to do some minor tests as well, depending on what is going on in there.
Who knows? Two years ago I went to the eye doctor with blurriness in my eyes and redness. Turned out to be a bacterial infection that took us 11 months and steroid eye drops to vanquish. I may never be able to wear contacts again - if I do, it may flare up again. However, the drops cured it, and for that I am grateful. But they had floated all kinds of things up - cornea replacement, damage, etc., before I went to the ophthalmalogist.
A floater may mean some slight damage to the eye. It may be an infection too. Only the doctor will know.
“Oh yeah, that happened to me when I was 16. Was seeing floaters in my eyes for a few days, went to the eye doctor and found out I had a detached retina. Many years later, still blind in that eye!”
Go to the doctor ASAP! My doctor told me that if I hadn’t waited the few days, they might have been more help to me.
On the other hand, I have a floater that looks like a microscope slide of a three celled organism. I’ve had it for 20 years. Weeks pass when I won’t see it at all, and there are days when it floats by 3 or 4 times.
I mention it every time I see a new eye doctor and have been told about the “gel” mentioned upthread.
I have no experience of the paper towelly feeling, but that’s a really good description.
Yeah, I’ve got a pretty consistent one (two blobs with two lines sticking out) that’s been there a couple of years. It likes to settle just in my line of vision so I have to wiggle my eye to get it out of the way. The optometrist wasn’t fazed at all.
I have that too, and they too look like organisms. I see them most clearly against white or shiney, or if it’s sunny out and I’m focusing on the inside of my sunglasses.
I’ve had floaters all my life, in both eyes. Ususally I don’t even notice them. My ophthamologist said that they were nothing to worry about. But that’s just me.
Okay, after being freaked out here I made a few stealth calls to some ophthamologists who said, “Holy god, come in now!” So that’s what I did. Turns out my eyes are fine and healthy and I have been diagnosed with occular migranes, which I didn’t even know existed until today. But my eyes were already not feeling great (due to the migranes, doncha know) and then she dialated them and shined lights into them so now I feel like I’ve been punched in the face by the Eye of Sauron.
Then I caught a cab to take me home and the cabby was so dumb he took me 29 blocks out of the way and dropped me on the side of the highway.:mad: I had to flag down a different cab to actually take me home. I took down the first guy’s name and cab number and will report him this afternoon.
Huh, I wouldn’t have guessed that from your symptoms as reported; I expect they differ between people though. My ocular migraines look more like this (no triple vision, it’s the white jagged bits) - but then 99% of the time they progress to real migraines. The first time they didn’t, I had one of the docs I work for take a look out of fear of retinal detachment.
Congrats on avoiding that rather nasty problem, though!
Ho-lee crap! I think that’s what I had a month ago! No migraine, but out of nowhere, I started seeing this weird, cut-glass-looking pattern floating around my field of vision. After about 20 minutes, it went away. It was translucent, though, not white. But definitely spikey and refracting. I had just been bodysurfing and so I initially thought it was particles of sand in my eye, but it seemed to persist when I closed either eye. Because it dissipated and there were no other symptoms then or since, I never got it checked out - I just figured I would mention it on my next trip to the optometrist.
So - if this was that, is there anything I can/should be doing about it?
You can’t really do anything about ocular migraines, although some people do find (as with regular migraines, which they may accompany, or may not) that ocular migraines have triggers such as food and environmental conditions. Since you mentioned the bodysurfing, I’ll just point out that some people find that heat is one such environmental trigger (of course it may not be for you; one time isn’t enough to say.)
And yes, mention it to your optometrist. Make sure you get a full dilated eye exam, as sometimes other, more serious things can mimic the symptoms of an ocular migraine.
Yeah, it’s not really white on mine either, more like sparkly translucent tending to a bright white light. Was your vision crap in the middle of the circle too until it had spread way out to the periphery? And 20 minutes is about right.
Do get yourself checked out. Me, I don’t mind them so much because I know I should take my migraine meds right at the start of the ocular part - you may be able to notice them early because you’ll have a faint spot like you looked into the sun or at a camera flash.
That is the best picture of ocular migraines I have seen! Hell, that is the only picture of ocular migraines I have seen. It definitely does a good job of capturing the effect. Always had these, get between 3 and 10 a year.
I’ve had a couple of those occular migraines before. The picture posted above is exactly what it looks like. It’ll start as a flash like I liked at a light, then get larger and then disappear. Once they’re gone it turns into a real migraine. They’re very infrequent. Once a year, then none the next, then 3 a year. Last one was over a year ago.
What? A lot of us have ocular migranes that have never progressed to the regular kind - you can search the boards for old threads. I know Dopers are an exceptional group, but the 99% figure has to be wrong for so many of us to only get one kind.