I am on Observation Duty

(sigh)

It's official---I am on observation duty.

It was supposed to be a day where I would laze about, figuring out what to do on this off-in-lieu that I took on a whim because I didn't want to have too many leaves to clear. I woke up, and when I moved my eyes, I saw flashes of light at the peripheries of the lower left quadrant and upper right quadrant of my left eye.

Uh-oh.

See, I've been a high myope (defined as having <−6.00 dioptres of refraction error), which is a high risk factor for retinal detachment, a non-lethal but sure-as-hell-will-fuck-up-your-quality-of-life condition. Combine that with age and the symptoms (not going to link to it directly---just read off the Wikipedia page), I was suitably concerned.

I dallied a little, wondering if it was something intermittent. I chilled out in front of Eileen-III, thinking about what to have for dinner, and when it was nearer the middle of the day, decided to do a quick check on the light flashing situation---I could replicate it, easily.

Uh-oh.

I knew something was up, and brain kicked into overdrive. I was told before to seek immediate medical attention when I saw these symptoms (and was ready for it), but never quite worked out where to head to for this.

General Practitioners would be useless since they don't have the slit lamp that was necessary to accurately see what was going on at the back of my eyeball, and the Emergency Department felt a little too overkill for what I deemed to be Urgent Care at most (I was not actively going blind in the eye, and was thus not an emergency). Calling SNEC put me on hold for too long, and HealthHub told me that they'd get back to me with an appointment in two working days---mind you, it wasn't an appointment in two working days, but the notice of an appointment in two working days.

(sigh)

I ended up back to where I last went more than a decade ago for eye issues---Eastern Hougang Eye Specialist. I went as a walk-in, had my basic eye performance measured out, pupils dilated, and waited for more than an hour (out of the projected three) before I was looked at by the doctor.

Age-related posterior virtreous detachment. Apparently, apart from the increased risk of being a high myope, that I had shitty skin contributed to an increase in risk too, leading to today's episode and eventual diagnosis. Lattice degeneration was not sighted, and prognosis is good.

Generally, we're on official observation duty for the next six to eight weeks to watch out for any retinal tears that come from the shrinking of the vitreous humour due to age-related degeneration, so that we can fix them up pronto before it gets into retinal detachment territory.

The risk of any nonsense happening is highest in this first week, and thus my vigilance for anything novel beyond the new baseline set this morning. More importantly, I know where to head to when things go south---back to the doctor at Eastern Hougang Eye Specialist.

There is nothing else to be done other than observing if any repairs to retinal tears are needed---the general idea is that after the six to eight weeks, the vitreous humour would have stabilised to its new shape/size, thus reducing the amount of mechanical stimulation it is doing to the retina when it jiggles in the loosened up space.

Am I afraid? Not really. As I said, this is something that I had been told would happen a long time ago, and so, I'm quite prepared for it from most fronts, except for the ``how the hell do I kickstart the process'' bit that has since been resolved. That bit on eczema raising the risk factor was the only new thing that didn't know about, but it does make some sense---the origin cells for the retina are similar to that of the epidermis, the very same layer [of cells] that I am having shit-tier inflammation control over.

Meanwhile, nothing that involves knocking the vitreous humour about within my eyeball during this period for me.

And I need to find a new day to clear that off-in-lieu, now that I have a medical certificate to cover for today. 🤦‍♂️

Hopefully, the next visit is next week as planned, and not earlier because something stupid has happened in between.

Till the next update.