float on
about three years ago i was reviewing a tenure file and i noticed a funny speck on my right eye. as i moved my head, it would float across my field of vision like a cheap sci-fi spaceship. i tried washing, rubbing, blinking, squinting, and drowning my eye in visine, but the little spaceship would just float on.after calling a nurse helpline and googling around a bit, i learned i had "floaters" or asteroid hyalosis (that's where i've seen 'em -- in the old arcade game asteroids). here are a few lines from my favorite serious medical definition:
asteroid hyalosis is a common degenerative process in which fatty calcium globules collect within the vitreous humor. These opacities move along with the vitreous humor when the eye moves.
is that the coolest collection of words and phrases? i'm definitely going to work "fatty calcium globules," opacities, and vitreous humor into an article at some point. it was especially helpful to learn this fun fact from the wikipedia entry:
it is not, however, only elderly people who suffer from floaters; they can certainly become a problem to younger people, especially if they are myopic.
myopic? who me? or am i elderly? and what's all this about suffering? it can be a little annoying to see the battlestar globulica gliding across everything one reads, but it sure ain't suffering.
floaters are really no big deal. they either go away after awhile or floatees (i prefer the term to "sufferers") simply stop noticing them. my friend ron aminzade said his disappeared after he "started doing yoga and stopped being chair." uh-oh. i'm just starting the chair thing and i'm way too flexibility-impaired to attempt yoga. other academic friends link floaters to stress, but i can only find anecdotal evidence on this point.
for now, the floaters are simply a constant uninvited companion. they don't really bug me, but i wish they'd make themselves useful and take notes on my reading or something.
note: the image above is a 2004 photo by elliott linwood. you can order it here.
posted by christopher uggen @ 12:36 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
i've got one too! My doc said it might come from reading too many journal articles with small print -- at Boynton, they get a lot of grad students with floaters. They are really annoying, like constantly having a mosquito flying on my left...
I was wondering if there might be some parable embedded in the onset of the floater while reading a tenure file. A speck in your neighbor's eye, log in your own...??? Things that make you go, hmmmmmm.
sara, i know you're neither elderly nor myopic. i'm trying to make friends with my floaters but, like mosquitos, they don't really make good friends.
good point, sarah. here's the "onset" scenario: i was reading rob warren's file on a sunny saturday and beaming with minnversity pride about what a fine file it was. i thought it might have had something to do with switching between the text on the page and the text on the screen. today, i definitely notice 'em more when i'm not sleeping and/or under stress. but i'm still resisting yoga...
Total props to Rob Warren, and to you for having the good sense to see past yer specks. Speaking of stress-related maladies, a good friend of mine recently defended his diss and wound up with some bizarre eye infection during the post-defense, diss-finalaizing rigamarole. In fact, I think it may have involved some fatty globules, although under his eyelid. Anyway, as the infection took hold he wound up looking like he'd been punched in the eye, which I think reflected his emotional-psychological reality fairly well. I had bursitis a year ago following my acceptance to the social work PhD program and my mom's second cancer diagnosis. Go figure. I think we Westerners are just way too out of touch with the ways our minds-bodies-spirits are connected. I learned from a Hmong client today that if your knees hurt, they probably have too much static in them, so what you need to do is put a pencil between your toes and rub your legs to let the static out. I thought you might want to keep that in mind for your next marathon, C.
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A company called Chakshu Research has an eye drop currently in clinical trials for the treatment of cataracts -this treatment may possibly be effective in asteroid hyalosis -- as they resolubilize calcium lipid complexes that form the basis of asteroid hyalosis
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