Angles, Lasers, Iridotomies, and Sunglasses from the Pearl Market

Everything seemed totally fine to me. No headaches. No squinting. Everything seemed crystal clear to me. But, that didn’t seem to matter when it came to the letters on the poster down the hall. I was going to get a physical, tick a box to say it was done but my mistaken Es, Fs, Gs, and Qs just led me to add another box on the list to tick. She told me I tested at 20/40. I started imagining what hipster glasses I’d be able to pull off.

I finally got around to making that optometrist appointment a month or two later. I mean, what’s the rush to get funky glasses when I was still able to do life without them? He put all sorts of lenses in front of my eyes, showed me likely the same chart that I had supposedly bombed a couple months earlier, then told me I had 20/20 vision when using both eyes together (which I typically do). So, no glasses for me after all. Come back when age wins and my arms aren’t long enough to help me focus better, he told me. Then, he filled my eyes with some crazy drops and took one last look.

Then something changed.

I hadn’t been to an eye doctor in about 15 years, but I knew he was looking for longer than he should. Then, he started questions about family history and pain. He started talking irises and
trabecular meshwork and blindness and iridotomies.

I have what’s called acutely narrow angles. There is small space in your eye called the “Angle” that has an upper boundary of the cornea (clear window of the eye) and a lower boundary of the iris (colored part of the eye), with these structures coming together like the sides of a triangle. Here, there is usually plenty of space for the fluid of your eye to pass next to the iris and out through what’s called the trabecular meshwork. In some people though, the eye is shaped a bit differently, and this drainage area that is supposed to be a 45 degree angle is very narrow (like in my silly eyes which have 5 degree angles). Under certain circumstances, such as dim illumination or stressful situations (of which I have plenty), the drain can completely close off. When this happens, the fluid continues to be produced and the pressure inside the eye increases over minutes to hours and leads to a form of glaucoma that can leave you blind. That’s not good.

There’s no symptoms, no way to know I had this…that is, no way except by finding myself in the ER due to excruciating eye pain and headaches or by going to see an eye doctor…which I did only because of a misread eye exam at my physical.

Urgent eye surgery is definitely not as hipster as a pair of glasses. But, it’s how I roll. So, I’ll try to be cool about it when I head to the eye surgical center early tomorrow AM and bring down the average age in the waiting room by a couple decades. I’ll have an iridotomy on one of my eyes, where the doctor will make a small hole in one of my irises using a laser so that the fluid has an escape route and my eye pressure doesn’t explode. It’s quick but a little “uncomfortable” I’m told (which likely means there will be gnashing of teeth…I am not a big fan of “uncomfortable”). Then, next week, I do it all over again for eye #2. Don’t know if it should make me feel better or worse that the doctor won’t do both eyes at one time due to risk.

Maybe when I’m in China in a few weeks, I’ll buy myself some super cool sunglasses.