not going blind today

Yesterday was an early-dismissal-Friday for me (I work an unnecessarily-complicated nine-days-in-two-weeks schedule, which results in eight days of eight hours and one day of six hours), and a new handlebar* had appeared in the post, so I took some time in the not-quite-frosty garage yesterday to install it. This required installing all new cables, so it was quite a process. While I was doing it, I noticed what appeared to be shooting stars in the right side of my peripheral vision. They persisted through the night, and when they were still there at oh-dark-thirty this morning the first time I arose, I did a bit of internet research to see what they might be.

I looked at a few sites, and most of them said the same thing: they are probably nothing to worry about, especially for the over-fifty-and-mildly-hypertensive (a class to which I undoubtedly belong)... but they could be the first sign of a detaching retina, leading to blindness (some sites were a bit more hysterical in tone). So this morning, The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I went off to Princeton Eye Group, where she gets her eye exams, to see if they could fit me in. They did, and, after getting drops in (and I am no easy eye patient), the doc did my exam and said I had no real problem, and the new lightshow was a result of aging and hypertension. She said it as professionally as she could, being young enough to be my daughter and all.

I decided two things:

1. If the only way to avoid this kind of thing is to die at an age younger than I currently am, I am willing to take these unpleasantnesses as the cost of continuing to survive (for now, anyway); and
2. It's time to start going to a real ophthalmologist. I've been getting my eyes checked at an optometrist, but I've apparently gotten to the point that I need to have a real MD looking at 'em.  TEW is delighted that I'm giving up on what I've come to refer to as "Jiffy-Lube eyecare".

I wasn't riding today anyway, and I'm glad I went. I'm not the only guy I know who hates going to the doctor, partly because of the fear that somebody with a labcoat on is going to get an attitude about my wasting his time with my petty complaint. I've been walking around the house saying, "So, TEW... I'm not going blind today."

I guess I was more worried than I thought I was.

*I am so taken by, and so jealous of, that Mercian about which I recently posted, that I yielded to the temptation (which I fought off for more than a year) to buy myself a Velo-Orange Gran-Cru handlebar, for no other reason than the shiny bling. Even despite my cheapness, sometimes I cannot withstand the need for some pretty.