Friday, October 31, 2008

Eyes are scary, no?

So it's Halloween and that means that I have to do something festive like give out candy or carve pumpkins or something. Except I don't have time for all of that, so I'm going to post a gross picture of an eye. At least, most people seem to think it's gross. I think it is astoundingly cool.

Check this out:



That is my eye!!!...or really my optic nerve.

Notice the little white spot...looks kinda fuzzy? That's Mr. Fuzzle. He's a cotton wool spot, or a nerve-fiber layer infarct. It's often a symptom of diabetes, HIV and hypertension; three things that I have been tested for and that I'm sure I don't have.

I started having weird spots in my vision the other day and I paid a visit to the ophthalmologist. He did all sorts of cool tests and dilated my pupils, which I've never had done before. One of the tests showed two little blind spots in my left eye, besides the normal big-arse blind spot. Upon closer inspection, the doc noticed Mr. Fuzzle.

I need to go to another specialist (I'm kinda confused about this. I thought that the specialist was sorta an "end of the line" thing...) next Friday so they can decide if this is really weird and whether or not I should get some blood work done. I guess most healthy, young adults don't get these...though mine is an isolated one and they usually occur in bunches when some horrible disease is underlying.

Anyway, that's my addition to this crazy holiday. I'll be donning my costume in less than an hour and heading over to a friend's house to see her son's costume and her decorations. Then, it's off to volunteer at the co-op for an hour and then on to Friendly's to have sundaes with J and my friend Franky.

What are you doing tonight?

11 comments:

Zach said...

Eyes are wierd. Getting your pupils dilated is freaky. It happened to me last time I got an eye exam.

Tonight I'm having my semi-annual Halloween party which will involve pizza, pop, a horror movie, and, if things work out, Guitar Hero. Like I said on my blog, I really dragged (drug?) my heels this year and didn't come up with a costume. I'm just going to wear my SVP hat and pretend to be an amatuer (sp)paleontologist.

ReBecca Hunt-Foster said...

We sat around the house, ate pizza and watched Poltergeist and the Wedding singer. We only had 11 trick-or-treaters (2 of which were on roller blades with no costumes, and 2 teenage girls who were dressed all sluty and were maybe 14).

Anonymous said...

Don't forget to ask the Specialist if
either Acute ITP or a family history of Cerebral Aneurysm could have anything to do with the cotton wool spots.

I successfully avoided the trick or treaters and they did not egg our house this year.

Dicing with Dragons said...

Wow.

Basically, I did nothing. Well, I went to Zach's party, but excused myself early for not fitting in with the drinking (I am averse to it, since it remains a sort of temptation whenever hard liquor is involved.) But also, this was simply not my crowd anyhow.

I was "Man in Hat," which is less an indicator of laziness and more an indicator of "I thought Halloween was next month?" Next year, I'll be going as Toshiro Mifune from Sanjuro. For sure.

Went home, watched some awesome Val Lewton films and slept away the night.

Amanda said...

Yay! Sorry I haven't commented back! I guess Blogger is no longer emailing me when I get comments.

:(

Halloween was fun. I danced and maybe 20/500 people knew what my costume was.

Maia said...

Sorry to barge in on your blog here, I found this entry when I was googling stuff about eyes. The other day I noticed my vision was weird (thought it was a migraine coming on) and then worked out that I had a kind of fuzzy spot a bit below center in my left eye. I got sent by a GP to a specialist and after all the tests (including putting a big fat lens thing in my eye) he found a small fuzzy white spot on my retina. He said it was rare and possibly due to a virus. He said to take asprin though in case it was a blood clot issue. He then also referred me to another specialist.

So it was very weird finding such a similar story in your blog.

So did they work out what was the cause of yours? I saw you said something about having an aneurysm - is that IN your eye? Is that what caused the eye thing? And has it resolved yet?

I'm such a stress head I keep thinking it must be the start of something really dire like MS or something.

Hope you don't mind me asking this stuff.

Regards,

Maia

Amanda said...

Hi Maia,

They never really resolved the eye thing, but the cotton wool spot DID disappear and hasn't been a problem since.

They found the aneurysm after doing an MRI, which I requested since I had the eye thing, some headaches and a family history. An aneurysm is an outpouching in the blood vessels - this one is in my carotid artery. They can be nasty little buggers and rupture if they get too big, which can be fatal.

I don't know that the eye thing was related, so don't get too scared! But maybe you can request an MRI (make sure insurance covers it - it's so expensive).

Good luck - let me know how it turns out!

Maia said...

Thanks for replying Amanda.

Interesting that the brain thing was found while looking for what was causing your eye thing. Good that they don't think it's serious enough to warrant operating straight away. Hope for you it stays like that!

I have an appointment with the retina guy in a few weeks. Guess I'll find out then.

Cheers, Maia

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