Mosaics' Blog

I don't like to write about health problems because when I actually write them down, I sound like a poor unhealthy sot...which I'm not. In fact, I've been remarkably healthy for someone who's unknowingly had a disease all her life. But I'm going to talk about my eyes. In addition to celiac disease, eye problems run in my family. It's a retina detachment disease called Waggoner-Steckler (sp?). My uncle has told me that the disease is named after our family (some claim to fame, huh?) because it was first discovered in our family...you know, how they name a disease after the first person who had it, or they name a star after the first person who mapped it. I'm not sure I believe that uncle, since he is prone to exaggeration and I don't know of any Waggoners or Stecklers in our genealogy.Anyway, we have it in our family. So far, I haven't had any signs of retinal detachment, but I'm paranoid about it so I see a retina specialist fairly regularly. About 5-6 yrs. ago an ophthamologist discovered that I had acute angle glaucoma. There was a simple fix for that. He just used a laser to poke a whole in the top rim of my iris. It doesn't bother me and I hardly know it's there. Just occasionally I'll see a tiny star of light that will reflect in the holes.A couple of weeks ago, for the second time this year (Jan. and June), I had an episode with my eyes that made me worry, so I went to the retina specialist and he checked me out. Everything was OK and he said what I was experiencing was a migraine incident that briefly affects my vision (even though I don't have migraine headaches). So, the past, oh, maybe three days, I've been seeing this flash of light over to the left of my vision. When I close my eyes I see it in the negative. So now I'm worried again, but I don't want to go back to the doctor. It's expensive and I hate people fooling with my eyes...dilating them, poking them, shining blindingly bright lights in them. In fact, I'm thinking that's what has caused this flash...the blinding light that was shown into my poor dilated pupil.