The human body doesn't come with an owner's manual!
I went to an eye doctor the other day - a retired fellow who was quite active back in the day in developing a lot of the eye tests that are used today to detect eye problems. I was telling him about my old doctor, "Dr. Dolittle" (no, really) who had an oak-paneled office in the State Tower Building in downtown Syracuse, New York back in the 1970's. He wore a waistcoat with a pocket watch on a chain, even! He had these wooden racks of lenses and he would put this contraption on your head and start stacking lenses until the bridge of your nose hurt.
My new doctor said, "like THIS?" and opened up a drawer containing a wooden case lined with felt with row upon row of lenses. "Old School!" I cried, "No school like the old school!" I knew I liked this guy from the get-go.
The reason I went was I recently had an eye infection and also I was seeing zoomies - black streaks (and sometimes white flashes) at the periphery of my vision. I was also seeing darker than normal "floaties" in my line of sight, as well as a wallpaper of lighter floaties in my vision. It was concerning and I remember reading something that this could be a sign of a detached retina or something. Geez, I am really falling apart!
Well, my retina is OK, but I learned about posterior vitreous detachment, which is illustrated in the diagram above. Simply stated, there is a bag of goo inside your eyeball, that fills up most of the space. Between ages 40-65 or so, part of this goo bag may partially detach from the retina which may lead to weird things in your vision, temporarily. It can also be caused, I believe, by physical injuries, It is not deemed to be harmful per se, but if the zoomies or flashes come back, it may be a sign the retina is detaching.
On the one side, I am glad to hear I am no going blind. On the other hand, it is like, really God? This is how life plays out - ending not with a bang, but a whimper? As we get older, we just gradually fall apart, getting more and more comfortable with the grave. By the time you are 90, you end up like my neighbor, who told me yesterday that she is ready to die. And I get that. It sounds sad, but after nearly a century of living, you get comfortable with the end game and oddly enough, are not scared of it. Maybe that is why horror movies always use old people as jump-scare props. We are literally, the walking dead.
What is a real tragedy, I now realize, is when a young person dies - they are not gradually used to the idea and plans and dreams are cut short, and they may leave behind a spouse or children. So much possibility - left undone.
But old people! They're ready to check out.
