THE TROUBLE WITH FLOATERS

Eye floaters - technically muscae volitantes (Latin for “hovering flies") - are tiny, oddly shaped objects that sometimes appear in your vision, often on a sunny day. They look like black spots, cobwebs, threads or a squishy little amoeba. They seem to drift aimlessly in your field of view. If you try to catch one, it disappears.

Simulation of Floaters

The trouble with eye floaters is that you don’t know if they are real or an illusion. They might annoy you, but they usually do no harm.

Floaters are actually small bits of matter inside the vitreous, the gel-like substance that fills about 80 percent of the eye. When the vitreous shrinks, small bits of waste are created. The particles cast tiny shadows on the retina. These are floaters.

Most people have experienced floaters, even The Family Guy:

MY FLOATERS

I can’t recall experiencing eye floaters until after the botched surgery on my right eye. After the surgeon’s light burned my retina, little pieces of the damage began showing up frequently in my sight.

The first time I remember a posse of floaters arriving was a couple of weeks after my “eye jab.” I was reading a newspaper. All of a sudden I was attacked by flies. At least that was what I was seeing.  I batted at the flies and they vanished. Then they reappeared. Did I leave a window open?

I got up to check the windows and noticed that the flies had reappeared all around the room.  Then I realized the flies were an illusion.  What was going on was going on inside my eye.

I told a friend about this experience and he had his own floater story to tell. He said a few years ago he got stoned on a sunny afternoon and drifted off to sleep. He suddenly woke up and saw what he thought were locusts all over his body. Holy glaucoma!

SOMETIMES FLOATERS MEAN THERE ARE PROBLEMS

Most of the time floaters are part of the natural process of aging. However, there are more serious causes of eye floaters. If they appear in large numbers and/or all of a sudden, get professional help. Floaters might be a warning of infection, hemorrhaging, retinal tears, and (in my case) injury to the eye.