Last Wednesday I woke up and had a massive spot in my vision. After years of stuff like this, I didn't panic. I thought perhaps it was a new floater, and eventually my brain would learn to disregard it just as it had a dozen times before.

But this time it was different.

Then it disappeared. Kinda. But it left a massive blurry spot behind, which caused a doozy of a headache. So I visited my awesome optometrist who took photos of my eye. She was concerned that her equipment (which is mostly built for prescribing glasses and contacts and monitoring general eye health) wasn't extensive enough to see what's going on, so she made me an urgent appointment at the ophthalmologist.

And today was the day.

The took new photo scans of my eyes... including some a machine I had never seen before.

Turns out there's a tear on my retina...

It's that nasty green thing at the top...

Dumb luck worked in my favor, because a surgeon happened to be walking by as he was leaving for the day and saw my pictures. He walked into the room to take a look in my eye for himself and said that I should have surgery to put a scar around the tear so it doesn't get any bigger and detach my retina. That sounded scary, so I asked how soon I could get on the schedule to have it done.

"I'm going to do it right now."

Next thing I know, I'm staring into a laser gun with a lens stuck to my eye as my amazing surgeon starts blasting hundreds of flashes of light at my retina... damaging the tissue so it will scar over and make a barrier to keep my tear from spreading and causing serious problems.

I was told it might hurt and feel like a dull ache in my eye. I felt it, but it didn't hurt.

When I left the clinic, it was empty. Which made me realize how lucky I was to have a doctor care so much about protecting my vision that he stayed late to take care of it.

I was able to drive home with two pairs of sunglasses on my face and was fine. For about an hour. Then the dull ache pain thing started happening, so I took an overdose of Advil with a Benadryl chaser and went to bed. And once the pain drifted away, so did I.

I slept for 9-1/2 hours, which is more sleep than I've gotten in decades. And now I'm sitting in bed with my cats trying to pull out of my sleep-haze so I can get to work.

Which is sure to be fun because the blurry spot is still there, and I'm told it could be six months before my brain can make it go away enough so I don't notice it.

Don't get old, folks... there's nothing good that comes of it. One day things are fine, the next day your eyeball is falling apart.