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It's true what they say about masterbation...if you do it too much you'll go blind!

There is a problem with my right eye. I've finally gotten my insurance and gone to the optomologist and discovered that I have a condition that left untreated would have certainly caused permanent and possibly complete loss of vision in my right eye. pretty fucking scary.

Yesterday i went to the optomologist and he said, "I see a problem here but I'll need you to go to a specialist to have it properly diagnosed and I want you seen right away because this isn't particularly normal for someone your age." I spent most of the day today at retinal specialist. it was actually pretty facinating. they took pictures of my retina and injected me with this wierd dye that makes it look like I'm pissing floresent highligter fluid and gives my skin a yellow cast. heh, lovely. but getting to see my retina was pretty awesome.

Here's what's happening: there are these abnormal blood cells that have developed on my retina. these blood cells are hemoraging and leaking blood and fluid. this is causing striations (streach marks) in the tissues near my Macula. I had already done my research on theNet in some stupid effort to self diagnose and I thought something was wrong with my macula. Turns out I was on the right track. the macula is the part of the eye that we use for reading fine details and recognizing faces. right, so where was I? Yes striations on the macula and this is why I am having an area of my vision that is blurred and distorted. Why is this happening to someone my age? Well, there can be various reasons and medical terms you and I dont really understand, but the fact of the matter is, most of the time they don't really know WHY it happens, it just does. So now you are thinking, " ok Sara, what the hell do they do about this?" I'll tell you. they stick a needle in your eye.

So actually, the procedure sounds a hell of alot scarier than it actually is. I was nervous as hell. The plan was that they would inject a drug called Avastin(TM) into my eye. This drug that was actually developed to treat something else, called metastic colorectal cancer, but is also being used for other things. It helps to prevent further growth of these abnormal blood cells that are disrupting my vision. In the best case senario, the blood cells will stop growing and hermoraging and hopefully they wil shrink up causing my vision to return to normal or almost normal. they put a bunch of numbing eye drops and antibiotics in my eye. then they trick you and tell you that they are doing something else to your eye, when in fact they are giving you and injection in your eye. so the next thing you know, they say they are done and you're like, "NUH UH!!!!? but you didn't do anything did you?" and they say, "yep the proceedure is over, you can go home."

I look pretty normal. They said you can end up with a severly blood shot eye for a week or so, but so far my eye is barely red. It does, however, feel like my eye has been scratched or poked, which is pretty normal after having a needle shoved in it. Now I have to use antibiotic eye drops to be sure I don't get an infection and hopefully in a week or two I'll start seeing an improvement in the vision in that eye. (by the way my other eye is normal and healthy and has 20/20 vision!). there isa possibility that I will need to have the procedure done one more time, but the doc feels pretty good that we caught this early enough and my chances for recovery are good. He said had the blood cells grown any bigger it would have been harder to treat, so it's good I came in when I did. whew!

So that was my very educational and exhasuting day. I'vejust woken up from a nap and I'm feeling ok except for the scratchy eye. I'm just thankful that I didn't ingore this problem, because eventually it would have taken over my whole feild of vision and by then it would have been to late. man to think..... you don't always appreciate your vision until something like this happens.