A tear in my eye?

(Tear in the title is pronounced with a long a, not a long e.)

A feeling of relief swept over my as the doctor stepped back and said, “Everything looks good.” Two weeks ago, I was in for my annual checkup with the retina specialist. A few years ago a colleague had repaired a tear in my right eye. Now something had shown up in my left, aka my “good” eye. I hadn’t noticed any changes in my vision. Asymptomatic is the term the doctor charted. A little lasering was the treatment he prescribed. (I’m sure there is more clinical-sounding word for that.)

So an assistant numbed up my eye, I put my chin and forehead on the “look inside your eye” machine, and the doctor got to work with a trigger in his hand and an intensely bright light shining in my eye. For about ten minutes he fired shot after shot around the tear to isolate and attach anything that might come loose. There was a soft sound kind of like a “pew-pew-pew” over and over again as he called for his assistant to increase the power after each round. It didn’t really hurt. The sensation was like someone was in my head poking a blunt stick on the back of my eyeball. Annoying but not painful.

When it was all over, the assistant rinsed out my eye, put a patch over it and said, “Wear this for about an hour.” I asked, “Any aftercare instructions?” “Nope,” was his reply. “We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.” Oh. Ok. And just like that I was done and out the door. It turns out that was the easy part. Now I had to drive home with a patch over my good eye and my so-so eye fully dilated. It was only a mile or so, but I vowed right then and there to get a driver from now on.

For the next fourteen days I was ultra-sensitive to every little floater, shadow, blurriness, sensation that might indicate that something wasn’t right. Nothing happened during that time, but I was hyper-vigilant.

Finally it was time for my recheck. My driver dropped me off and left to run some errands. The doctor only dilated my recovering eye, peered in at every possible angle with two different kinds of light, and announced, “Everything looks good.” For the rest of the day, none of the floaters or shadows bothered me at all. Those three words made all the difference in the world.

On his way out, the doctor said, “We’ll want to see you more than once a year now.” I replied, “I’ll come whenever you want. Thank you!”

Eyes are pretty amazing. So are the doctors who specialize in the care of eyes and the correction of vision.