How about a nice sharp stick in the eye, huh?

Last Monday, around 10am, I suddenly developed a spot in my left eye that seemed as though someone had taken a flash photo of me, except that nobody had and the after-image didn't go away. It was irritating, and by evening it had grown into a ring-type shape.

In addition to the after-image, the area was also blurry and kinda acted like a blind spot in that items in that area weren't as sharp and a little muted colorwise.

In a disappointing first, Google failed me in trying to figure out what this was. So did Yahoo and Ask for that matter.

When Tuesday rolled around and it was still there, I decided to set up an appointment with an Opto... oftho... ophta... eye doctor. After staring at a bunch of charts and having my eyes dilated and examined, the doctor came back with Central Serous Retinopathy (or CSR to the initiated).

Basically, a vein in the upper layer of my retina is leaking fluid (but not blood) and this is causing a bulge in my retina that's manifesting as a blurry spot in the center of my vision. Apparently I've had this before since there's some scarring on my retina, though I've never had these symptoms. My left eye did start going slightly out of focus a while back, but only slightly and I figured it was just part of getting older and getting closer to needing glasses.

Apparently CSR is a fairly common thing in males (check) aged 20-40 years (check) and it's usually brought on by an episode of stress (check, heck, infinity-check).

The tough part is, there's no treatment for this, though it does eventually go away on its own. I can expect a few weeks or months of this wonderfully distorted vision and then it's a total crapshoot if I'll return to normal or if I'll always have some limited blurriness and bad night-vision in that eye.

So driving and working in front of a monitor all day has been fun. I've developed a bit of vertigo at times when walking, mostly due to the fact that my left eye can't really see much at center vision other than general shapes and colors. Depth-perception is right out the window and good luck trying to read the alarm clock in the morning.

I love how the body sometimes deals with stress, putting you in situations that would seem to make things even more stressful. "Wow, I'm really stressed out. I know, let's screw up my vision! Yeah, that should make the stress go away!" Sheesh.