Hi-res Amsler Grid - Eye Damage Assessment

At -.05 you're really borderline as far as needing glasses goes. I was still able to get by fine most of the time, until my prescription started edging into the -1.5 territory.

Without glasses, I'm fine at home, but I'm basically blind anywhere else, especially if I haven't been there before.

I had a rather unpleasant experience at the beach a few years back... got caught in a pretty bad rip tide (I'm an ok, but not at all great swimmer). I got out of it fine, except very tired, and FAR back from where I started. Unfortunately it took me forever to find my way back to where I was, because at the time I didn't wear contacts, and everything beyond a few feet looked the same. Was very disorienting to stumble around through ~1.5 miles of beach.

Ouch, that is scary. The first thing I do when I am at unknown territory is looking how the sun is shining on the place. On the beach when facing the sea you see the sun then it is easy to get back to the shore with the sun in the back.

I'll admit, I was rather scared for a little while there, until the current eased off. I swam for a while parallel to the shore, never got out more than maybe 1km from shore... so I wasn't turned around while swimming. Just kind of scary to feel yourself just get pulled away... very uncomfortable feeling. I'm kind of lucky... based on what I read after, a lot of people try to swim against the current, and completely exhaust themselves.

Finding my stuff on the beach was the more disorienting part though. By the time I got out of the water I was kind of exhausted, and adrenaline wore off.

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I had a bit of a scare this weekend. Saturday morning I woke up with really bad vision in my right eye and weird patterns of dots and squiggly black lines. I've never had issues with "floaters" or anything else like that.

The first thing I did was check out the grids in the OP and thankfully the lines were all there and straight. (THANK you Trevor!) I was pretty sure that this wasn't laser related but I do take Ambien at night and tend to have huge gaps in my memory, so I couldn't rule it out completely.

Instead of going to the ER, like I should have, I opted to wait it out until I could reach my eye doctor for an appointment. In the meantime the lines and dots got better (Less of them) but my vision wasn't getting any better.

Fast forward until today and my doctors appointment. I'm only able to read 20/80 out of my right eye and it is normally 20/30 or so.

Apparently I have a vitreous hemorrhage caused by diabetic retinopathy. :undecided:

That sounds bad, but the hemorrhage was a good thing, it caused me to go to the doctor where they caught the retinopathy early. I go back on Friday to see the retinal specialist who will most likely schedule surgery. What kind of surgery? Of course it's LASER surgery. :lasergun:

Seriously guys, wish me luck. I just don't seem to be catching many breaks lately.

- James

Wow, good luck James, that sucks. Hopefully they'll be able to correct the problem, or at least prevent it from getting worse.