Today I become a VAMPIRE
Dec. 16th, 2010 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationYes, that's right, I will be a Child of the Night. For the next five days, I must hide myself away from direct sunlight lest my flesh burn in its glare. I will swath myself in cloth, wear a wide-brimmed hat and gloves, and not let the sun touch my skin.
Okay, backstory.
A week or so ago, I realized that what I'd thought was just smeary glasses that I needed to get around to actually cleaning and not just wiping on my t-shirt but actually a smeary and distorted spot right in the middle of my right eye. It was pretty bad-- I couldn't read out of just my right eye-- the distortion was right in the middle of my field of vision.
I checked the symptoms online, and came up with a bunch of terrible potential issues, including things like glaucoma and a detached retina. Mildly freaking out, I made an appointment with a local eye doctor, who peered in there and came back with a diagnosis of Central Serous Retinopathy (CSR). This was kind of a relief, considering the options.
For people too lazy to go read up at that link, CSR is kind of a blister under the retina, where fluid builds up beneath it creating a bulge. The cells of the retina don't get the nutrients they need, so vision suffers. It's caused by stress, lack of sleep, or just happens for no obvious reason besides possibly a genetic tendency toward it. In this case I'm guessing stress was involved.
The eye doctor referred me to a retinal specialist, who peered around and did some exciting tests (I'll post the pictures of my retina as soon as I get around to scanning them), including one where they injected me with dye and watched for it to squirt out into my eye. Sure enough it did, indicating leaking veins in my retina and confirming the diagnosis of CSR.
This is the kind of thing they like to take care of quickly. One of the treatments is to just kind of hang out and wait, and after 4 or 5 months it usually clears up, except when it doesn't, or except when veins grow into the space under the blister, which is a bad thing. The next treatment is to laser the spot, which leaves a little blind spot as well.
What I'm having done today, though, is less intrusive overall. It's a thing called Visudyne, which involves shooting me up with photosensitive dye and then hitting my eye with a laser that activates the dye, which sort of internally cauterizes the area preventing further leaks and the vein-growing-in thing.
The dye, however, hangs out in one's skin for 4 or 5 days after the treatment, and as a result, one's skin becomes photosensitive. Sunlight (or even bright indoor light, like unfiltered halogen lights) will activate the dye, causing sudden, severe sunburn-like burns. The dye is activated by light in the visible part of the spectrum, so UV-blocking sunscreen won't help.
Thus, I'm going to need to avoid sunlight and bright lights for the next few days. That means gloves, hat, probably a scarf, sunglasses (I have SEXY CLIPONS) and if I feel like a big enough nerd, the whole invisible-man getup. Sunlight will burn my skin. Awesome.
So yeah, I'm becoming a vampire for a week, and I will walk the darkened street of Ben Lomond, preying upon the weak, which probably mostly means stray packages of Tofurky. Fun times ahead!
Okay, backstory.
A week or so ago, I realized that what I'd thought was just smeary glasses that I needed to get around to actually cleaning and not just wiping on my t-shirt but actually a smeary and distorted spot right in the middle of my right eye. It was pretty bad-- I couldn't read out of just my right eye-- the distortion was right in the middle of my field of vision.
I checked the symptoms online, and came up with a bunch of terrible potential issues, including things like glaucoma and a detached retina. Mildly freaking out, I made an appointment with a local eye doctor, who peered in there and came back with a diagnosis of Central Serous Retinopathy (CSR). This was kind of a relief, considering the options.
For people too lazy to go read up at that link, CSR is kind of a blister under the retina, where fluid builds up beneath it creating a bulge. The cells of the retina don't get the nutrients they need, so vision suffers. It's caused by stress, lack of sleep, or just happens for no obvious reason besides possibly a genetic tendency toward it. In this case I'm guessing stress was involved.
The eye doctor referred me to a retinal specialist, who peered around and did some exciting tests (I'll post the pictures of my retina as soon as I get around to scanning them), including one where they injected me with dye and watched for it to squirt out into my eye. Sure enough it did, indicating leaking veins in my retina and confirming the diagnosis of CSR.
This is the kind of thing they like to take care of quickly. One of the treatments is to just kind of hang out and wait, and after 4 or 5 months it usually clears up, except when it doesn't, or except when veins grow into the space under the blister, which is a bad thing. The next treatment is to laser the spot, which leaves a little blind spot as well.
What I'm having done today, though, is less intrusive overall. It's a thing called Visudyne, which involves shooting me up with photosensitive dye and then hitting my eye with a laser that activates the dye, which sort of internally cauterizes the area preventing further leaks and the vein-growing-in thing.
The dye, however, hangs out in one's skin for 4 or 5 days after the treatment, and as a result, one's skin becomes photosensitive. Sunlight (or even bright indoor light, like unfiltered halogen lights) will activate the dye, causing sudden, severe sunburn-like burns. The dye is activated by light in the visible part of the spectrum, so UV-blocking sunscreen won't help.
Thus, I'm going to need to avoid sunlight and bright lights for the next few days. That means gloves, hat, probably a scarf, sunglasses (I have SEXY CLIPONS) and if I feel like a big enough nerd, the whole invisible-man getup. Sunlight will burn my skin. Awesome.
So yeah, I'm becoming a vampire for a week, and I will walk the darkened street of Ben Lomond, preying upon the weak, which probably mostly means stray packages of Tofurky. Fun times ahead!