Eye Floaters and off road riding?

At least I'm not the only who thinks this way!

Same here - I've had floaters (especially in my left eye) since a major car accident fractured my eye orbits 17 years ago.

You get used to them. The eye docs say I'm fine and hard dirt riding doesn't seem to have any ill effect.

It's good advice to get a clean bill of health, but once you have that, I wouldn't stress about making them worse. Just live your life and ride!

I've had them off and on as far back as I can remember (started when I was 5 or 6 maybe). They seem to have actually decreased with age. When I get them it looks like silver glitter floating down from top to bottom. I've also asked my docs and they've said not to worry about it. Leaning over and then raising up quickly was the only thing that seemed to make them start up. Otherwise it always seemed random.

Gettin old sucks, I've got the snake floaters and thats ok but about a year ago I was walking out to the garage during the day time comming from a fairly dark house to a bright setting. A beam of light got reflected into my eye off some aluminum and I could tell it caused dammage. The eye guy said it was a partial detachment, I don't remember the tech. explaination but it happens with age and I now have a pretty good blind spot in that eye.

Damm... That's a new one on me. That does suck... and yeah so does getting old.

You might have blepharitis. One of the symptoms is floaters.

Basically, in its milder cases, it is dandruf of the eye lip.

Warm water, diluted baby shampoo and gently scrub eye lids with cotton rounds.

Cannot be cured but, can be managed. :eek1

heh he, heh he....

you guys said "floaters"


Last time I checked I'm no opthamologist, but what I do know for sure is that the older I get, the more I remember being a hypercondriact. Not that it's a bad thing to worry about abnormalities, but jeez....If you are truly concerned then by all means, get checked out. Otherwise, you're just like the rest of the world and counting on webmd or some other such nonsense to self-diagnose what may very well be a "normal" condition.

Worry is responsible for far too many ailments in my limited experience....

A doctor is who you should be asking this question.

Just recently I was at an eye surgeon with my wife for something else, and I jumped at the opportunity to bombard him with unrelated questions

He was very patient and that is what I got from it, all of which has been said already:

- Floaters are normal.
- A sudden increase accompanied by flashes is BAD.
- You can remove them by draining the eye ball and let it fill up naturally again afterwards. That was that, and I decided there that I better get used to them :eek1

I also talked with several opticians and eye doctors about laser eye surgery for correction purposes, and it basically came out that it was not a good idea at all, rather risky in the long run. Every single one of them said that, except the ones that actually earn money with the procedure.

I wouldn't risk any surgical treatment on my eyes without a real need. A few floaters are not that bad after all...
Maybe my thinking is also influenced by having had a blind person in the family and being confronted with the contrast to being able to see well constantly.


A theory why you see them more after a bumpy ride:
Maybe it is the light, but also maybe it is that your eyes wobble around during the bumpy and vibrations and your brain adapts to that. Floaters won't really be visible with all that quick moving around and vibrating etc. Once it is still again, the background stops moving around so much and the floaters become more visible?

Thanks for asking the doc some questions. My whole idea was that, you were shaking things up, like a snow globe, or shaking shards of material loose, like when you shake a dead christmas tree and the needls shake loose. Im ok with the ones i have, i just dont want to make new ones from vibration and jarring.

I had a cataract, interocular lens, YAg laser capsulotomy, detached retina, cryo (freeze utside of eyeball) then schleral buckle (a permanent rubber band around my eyeball), vitrectomy, ahhh what have I missed, all before I was 35.

No one ever suggested I should avoid bumps and knocks, including my motorcycling optometrist friend who first found the cataract way back in 1990 after noticing me removing my specs to see what I was doing while we serviced our bikes.

I have the occasional floater; they don't really bother me.

Any time anything NEW happens, it is time to talk to your Optometrist/Opthalmologist (or GP, dermatologist, dentist, etc, according to which bit of you is affected).

That sounds ultra painful. How does that work?

I have the normal floaters, one long one and some spots, more on the left eye some on the right. I used to play with them when I was a kid, dodging clouds and stuff with them, then I got worried what they were as I played with lasers (stupidly) when I was younger. But when I got some glasses (which I dont really use that much as I'm far sighted, but only when I'm tired and my eyes cant focus) they checked my eyes and everything was ok.

Sometimes the floaters are really annoying, when its rainy and gray they seem to be there more reflecting on road surface, though a quick left - right eye movement usually moves them out from the field of vision so its ok. My tinted visor helps alot too during bike riding, the clear one keeps them more noticable.

I'd describe it more as sparkles. Sparkly flashing at the edge of my vision when I stepped out of a lecture theatre, followed by swirly shadows when I stepped out of the foyer of the building into the sunlight.

So I got a lift straight to the Eye and Ear Hospital, where they took quite a while to find the tear in my retina since it was right out at the edge, but they kept saying that I had described a patient's view of a torn retina so well that it had to be there somewhere. Apparently they don't often get to see them so soon after they happen.

They actually refill the eye with isotonic saline, which the body then replaces over time.

Long term effects of something they've only been doing for 20 years are very difficult to know.

The other issue is that the typical patient for laser correction is myopic (short sighted) and aged 30s to early 40s, when they can afford such treatment. Around 45, like all of us, they will become presbyopic (unable to focus as close) and will require reading glasses. If they were still myopic, (no laser surgery), they could typically take their glasses off to see small detail.

That's almost exactly what numerous othalmologists have said to me.

Not at all painful, there are no pain receptors inside your eye. As for how it works, well I was dead to the world while they did it, so I can only report on the results...

I started seeing floaters in my left eye around Christmas this past year. This didnt bother me, as I was told floaters are not that uncomon and not serious. Then New Years eve I awoke with only 2/3 of my vision in that eye. Now I am concerned!!! After seeing the family doctor and being refered to two speicalistis, I was sent to a surgen and preped for surgery. I had a detached retna, and was told if I had waited another day I would have likely lost the sight in that eye perminatily. Its been almost two months since the surgery and the doctors say I will make a complete recovery. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEKING MEDICAL ADVICE FOR FLOATERS!!!!

I keep hearing stories of people who have discovered a detached retina days or weeks after it has happened, whereas I can actually remember seeing mine happening. It always seems remarkable to me that anyone could fail to notice it, but then I don't have binocular vision, I have conciously controlled alternating monocular vision (eg: I choose which eye to see with), so I notice what I can and can't see in each eye seperately.

It serves to emphasise that its not floaters per se that you need to worry about, but change.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEKING MEDICAL ADVICE FOR CHANGES!!!!

Sudden floaters.
Sudden change of ability to focus (that was a prelude to a cataract for me).
Sudden lumps, skin changes, blood in your poo, indigestion, you name it.
Sudden change in anything, optical or elsewhere, in your body is worth investigating.



Now for your entertainment (and on topic, I promise) I present my most recent sudden change.

Two weeks ago I had an eye examination at the local College of Optometry who have been treating me for over 20 years. As it happened the examining optom was a recent graduate just one week and three days into her first job as a qualified optometrist. They've got to start somewhere after all!

"How long have you had this lump on your left eye?"

"What lump? No one has mentioned a lump before..."

Now at this stage we don't know if this is something transient, something ancient and harmless, or something new and worrying, so she photographs it and notes it in my record. And for the squeamish, let me assure you I feel nothing at all of this lump.

Here's what it looks like:




Now one of the reasons I am happy to be examined by a recent graduate is that one of the senior optometrists at the college is an old friend of many many years, so I discuss everything with him.

Cue forward to the weekend:

"Do you know how long I've had this lump in my left eye?"

"What lump? You've never mentioned a lump before... Let's have a look."

(Cue concerned mumbling noises, puzzled muttering followed by "Ahhh!" and a laugh.)

And now I present a closeup of the lump:



Has anyone noticed the most obvious important feature of this lump yet?

It's got CORNERS.
It's RECTANGULAR!

Biology doesn't do rectangular.
Tumours don't have corners.

It's man made!

Rhino, you probably know what a schleral buckle is by now.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had a schleral buckle, like a rubber band around my eyeball.

Directly over the point where the retina has detached, a small piece of packing is placed under the buckle so that it forces the surface of the eyeball to deflect inwards slightly, pressing against the detached retina, so that it will re-attach as it heals.

While it's purpose is served within a few weeks to months when the retina has healed, the buckle and the packing are left in place except in a few special situations, such as children whose eyes are still growing larger.

Well it seems the packing has escaped out from under the buckle in my eye and moved forward under the conjunctiva.

My optom friend tells me:
A) he's seen this before, though not very often
B) he's not surprised a recent graduate hasn't seen it before
C) it is harmless

I showed my GP (who's father was an optometrist and a senior academic at the same college); she was intrigued by the shape but didn't pick what it was until I told her!

I think I will pop into the casualty department at the Eye and Ear hospital (who did the original buckle in 1995) and let them have a squizz at it just to be completely sure...