Floaters in My Eye

Parental Discretion Advised. Contains graphical descriptions which may not be for the weak hearted :)

Nice Saturday evening in Goa - I had just woken from a deep slumber induced by deep fried prawns and mangoes, and we were all dressing up for a night in town. I splashed my face with cold water, and noticed this spidery insect hanging from the hair on my forehead. I swiped it away, but it persisted - so I washed my face again, thinking it was on my eyelids. Then, to my horror, I realised, it was right there - and worse, was moving in perfect tandem with my eye! Damn - the thing was INSIDE my eyeball!

One of my relatives died a few years back due to bleeding in the eye. And when you see a dark maroonish black thingy that looks suspiciously like a droplet of blood in your eyeball, trust me, it scares the hell out of you! It scared me to death!

We rushed to the doctor - things got a little better on the way, when I realised that whatever it was, had stopped growing. Even if it was bleeding, it wasn't going to flood my eyes and kill me, yet!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the doctor heard my description and immediately confirmed that it was a "floater". While it can lead to complications like retina tear, which itself can lead to blindness, or could be due to high pressure in the eye, which also can lead to blindness and death, my floater turned out to be a harmless one, with a life span of around 3 weeks. And apparently all it will cause me is some irritation in my vision - after all, having a dead mosquitoe with a spidery tail moving around in your line of sight for 3 whole weeks is definitely not my idea of entertainment!

For more on this exciting phenomena, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater!