Detached Retina Diary

Summer 2006: It wasn’t my imagination!

At first, I felt that I couldn’t take it seriously.
‘Well, it’s my guess that you’ll have to stay in the hospital for two weeks,’ said the eye doctor.
Then he said, ‘I’ll write a letter of introduction for you. So, F. University Hospital or K. University Hospital: which do you prefer?’
I couldn’t decide which one was better! I picked the one that was slightly easier to reach from our house.

I had never stayed in hospital at any time in my life, and I was a little bit proud of it. I was born in my parents’ house. I still have my appendix, and I’ve never had children. My nieces or nephews had been put on an IV, but not me.

The first time I noticed something flying around in my right eye was around 20 July. (I didn’t know at the time, but this was myodesopsia, commonly called ‘floaters’. ) Later on, I perceived a light like a camera flash in the right side of my right eye a few times a day. What? Lightning? But it was there when I closed my eyes. Even so, I thought it was just my imagination, that it would get better soon: I was really stupid. (This symptom is called phosis.)

Then, on Monday, 7 August, I started to feel that something was wrong inside my right eye. I always seemed to be seeing a shade that looked like my nose. I felt it might not be good, and then I heard the eye doctor’s diagnosis. He said it was a classic detachment of the retina.

The eye doctor said, ‘Are detached retinas popular these days? You’re the third one today. And yours is the worst. But if you had come two weeks ago, you could have been treated by laser surgery.’ It was too late to hear that! There was nothing I could do to fix it.

Yaemi Shigyo, Saturday September 27th, 2008