Skip to main content

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

Post a Comment

TIFU - Don’t do what I did

On Sunday morning Aug. 24th, I awoke to discover a large blind spot in my right eye, which turned out to be what is called wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It has resulted in a very significant, permanent loss of vision in that eye. Although I maintain good peripheral vision, whatever I focus on at best is very blurry, and mostly disappears. I can barely make out the large E at the top of the eye chart. If this happens to my left eye I’ll be unable to read or drive.

It turns out that I missed the opportunity that I had to prevent this from becoming a serious problem because I failed to report what appeared to be minor changes in my vision. In the weeks prior to August I had noticed that what I knew to be straight lines appeared to my right eye to have a little waviness. I also noticed that the color of my front lawn, which I could see through the window from my recliner,  was subdued, looked almost gray, in my right eye. So I scheduled an eye exam, which revealed the presence of secondary cataracts. And the optometrist referred  me for a laser treatment to deal with the problem. 

Now, here is where I screwed up, I assumed that secondary cataracts were the reason I was seeing the anomalies I had noticed, so I did not mention the waviness or reduced perception of colors. These are very significant early symptoms of AMD. If I had mentioned them it is very likely that much of my vision loss would have been prevented because treatments are available to reduce injury to the retina when caught early. It is easy to suggest that my optometrist should have asked if I, an octogenarian, had noticed any of the classic AMD symptoms, but in reality I should have been more pro-active and mentioned everything that I had noticed.

My advice to everyone is to not ignore any changes, no matter how minor they may seem. Losing a significant portion of your vision is no fun, but to learn that you could have prevented much of it is devastating. If you notice something, tell your optometrist. Don’t expect him or her to figure it out. Don’t do what I did. 

TL;DR Tell your doctor everything that might affect your health.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TIFU by getting suspended for 2 days by my front office in school.

I (13M) am an African American student at Jeannette junior high who had got suspended for 2 days here. I was in math class minding my business until my teacher had told me to go to the main office, which posed no problem to me. As i went down there, the people of the front office had stopped me and made me get a new ID (yes, we have id's.) so i had asked them if i could maybe do a different alternative and call my mother to let her bring the Id here, even then, the Id isn't that important. So, although i was talking to them in a calm manner and not showing any signs of rebellion, they had threatened to call the police on me without thinking twice before calling my parents. This is where i started getting angry, and even then now the black peers agree that could have been a racially motivated action. They then told me to sit in the office conference room because of that, leading into more anger. They had then called my mother who had came over to the school didn't even let ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU Accidentally taught my 4 year old nephew the word chlamydia

So I very awkwardly taught my nephew, the word chlamydia the other day and not in the way that you would think… It was actually very innocent. I was with one of my sister’s friends and my friends who’s become part of the family and I was telling her about an interesting fact, not thinking about how my nephew was right beside us. I told her did you know that koalas can get chlamydia and that they can give it to humans… just a fun fact… and then he who can barely say clear words most of the time clearest day said koala chlamydia so that happened And he went to his grandmother’s house today, so I’m kinda hoping he doesn’t say that, but at the same time I would die laughter and about pee my pants if he did because holy crap, how do you react to that? TL:DR I shared a fact about koalas and my nephew hung on to two words from the sentence. Those two words which he repeated were koala chlamydia.
Post a Comment
Read more

TIFU by replying too confidently in a group chat and accidentally becoming “the source” for everything

This happened in my school group chat and I still don’t know why people trust me now. Someone sent a screenshot and asked if it was real or fake. It wasn’t even anything important, just random drama stuff. I replied pretty confidently like “nah that looks fake to me.” That should’ve been the end of it. But for some reason people took my answer seriously. Like too seriously. After that, anytime anything got posted in the chat, people would start tagging me asking “is this real?” or “check this.” Even stuff I had nothing to do with. At first it was funny, so I just kept giving opinions. Then it escalated. People started acting like I could tell what was true or fake instantly. Someone even said “if he says it’s real, it’s real” like I’m some kind of fact checker for school drama. Now I open the group chat and half the messages are just people waiting for me to confirm things I didn’t even see happen. I tried to back off and stop replying, but then people started DMing me inst...
Post a Comment
Read more