Zapping the floaters in my left eye

I've been bothered for about a year by excessive floaters - bits of debris in the eyeball that interfere with vision. If you see little things that look like amoeba when you stare into a clear blue sky, you know what I mean. I've had them as long as I can remember, even into childhood. I just figured it was normal.

The floaters in my left eye had gotten to the point where they compromised my almost perfect vision that I've enjoyed since getting both lenses replaced in late 2017.

My opthalmologist opined at my last visit that I might want to get them destroyed by laser. Sounded good to me, so I had it done this morning. Turns out it was a quick procedure that was absolutely painless.

The idea is the laser breaks them up into tiny pieces that get reabsorbed into the interior lining of the eyeball.

It's too early to know how well it went - he has me scheduled for an exam in a month - but I remain optimistic.

Isn't life interesting?

Here I am in the Emergency Room of Witham Hospital in Lebanon, Ind. last Saturday afternoon.

I had just put a frozen mini-pizza into the oven and set the timer for 28 minutes. I plopped down on the parlor couch and tried to get up when the timer went off. To my shock and horror, I couldn't stand up. My balance was completely gone and all I could do was flop back down into my seat. I found myself sweating profusely and too dizzy to move. All I could do was hold still and call Maria for help. I also experienced waves of nausea that culminated in me vomiting into a big plastic bucket. Maria said all of the color drained out of my face.

It was bewildering, made more so by the speed with which it overtook me. My first thought was that Covid had finally got me in its clutches. Maria made a quick call to Dr. Nicole Flora, my daughter-in-law in Las Vegas who listened to my symptoms and opined that I might be having a cardiac episode.

Minutes later, somewhat recovered, I was in the passenger seat of our Subaru Forester heading to the ER.

The words "cardiac episode" work like magic when you want to be seen at a hospital and I was promptly wheeled into a curtained examining room where about a dozen or more sensors were stuck onto my skin and I was hooked up to an electrocardiogram machine.

Presently, the ER doctor came in and listened to my story and, since the EKG showed no evidence of a heart problem, ordered a CAT scan and an MRI to see if I'd had a stroke. The CAT scan was no big deal and didn't trigger my claustrophobia, but the MRI was a different story.

I've always thought I wasn't a candidate for an MRI since I have a stainless steel plate and 6 screws in my left femur, a souvenir from when I rode a bicycle into the path of a car in April, 1956. But the MRI tech decided it wasn't an issue. She gave me a pair of earplugs to mute the noise of the MRI machine and put me into the machine with assurances that she would stop the process and free me if I started to freak out.

What followed was one of the more uncomfortable 15 minutes of my life, but I kept the anxiety tamped down and hung on.

Back in the ER examining room, the doctor said the two scans showed my brain was in good shape and there was no sign of stroke.

The doctor decided I had experienced a severe attack of vertigo. I've felt dizzy off and on for the past few months, so it kinda made sense. He gave me a prescription for Antivert and sent me on my way.

I posted this picture and the brave boast that it was probably nothing on Facebook when I got to the hospital. By the time I got home, I had more than 50 comments of support and prayers from Facebook. One friend asked if I was taking Gaviscon and sent me a link to a study linking Gaviscon to vertigo. I've been taking Gaviscon almost nightly for months. I pitched the bottle into the trash.

I categorize that tip as useful information that was probably worth the ER trip. And as a bonus, I now know my heart and brain are okay.