Suffice it to say we are not in our twenties, or thirties, or forties. Heck we're barely still in our fifties.
And I suppose more often than not, they are right, age is not about a number. It's a state of mind? Yes. Absolutely.
Except. When nature hammers home a reminder of the intransigent truth. And to quite Mr. Vonnegut, "So it goes".
Case in point. This week.
I woke up last Monday with peripheral flashes in my right eye. Now, in that I have been nearsighted and wearing glasses since I was 7 or 8 and contact lenses since I was 14, I don't give my eyes enough attention. The limitations of vision have always been there. I have been fortunate they have not hampered me. And so, I am given to wearing lenses too long. And switching them so that I forget which eye wears which slightly different prescription. But this was different. Oh, oh. So I called my optometrist. I haven't had need of an opthamologist for years. And my optometrist says, "You need to get to an opthamologist right away!" Oh, oh.
I had several morning appointments that I could not cancel and so, between the latter oh oh and my appointment, I worried a bit. Detached retina? Macular degneration? I reead the web. I am not enheartened.
The space of the Hollywood opthomologist is large and grand. Shiny. Modern. Couches and chairs. A coffee station for the guests. It's a place where they also have on site cataract surgeries and so people in green scrubs and brightly colored sneakers whisk in and out. Squeak. Squeak.
Opthomology exams take place in dimly lit rooms. All the light is thrown at your dilated pupils. They are looking inside your eyes so intently that if indeed they are windows of the soul every ne of my secrets was revealed to my newly introduced specialist. Well, there were actually two, one on Monday, and the retina specialist on Friday. Look up. Look up, and to the right. Look up and to the left. Look down and to the left. Other eye. Hey, the light is really, bright. It actually hurts. Just a little while longer.
I have a riper cataract on the right eye than on the left. That's news. But I guessed as much as in recent weeks my contact lens isn't helping with my reading vision so well anymore. Yup, both cataracts are smack in the middle of the retina, if I understand, and so in time will fully cloud my vision. You can have the surgery sooner, and bonus! You'll see 20 20 for the first time in your life without glasses. I thought this was a procedure way off in the future, but it will become necessary sooner rather than later. But that is not the immediate problem.
And happily, it is not exactly a problem, either, what I "have". I have a vitreous separation. Oh, my.
Well, it could be dangerous in some rare cases, and it could cause retinal detachment. But I don't have any sign of that. My eyes, my dears, well, they're just getting. . .old.
So what happened? Well, we are all born with this spongy gel in the cavity of the eye that attaches to the retina. All is well. Then for those of us of a certain age, and add to the mix, it happens sooner with some of us nearsighted folk, it begins to harden, and shrink, and break off, causing those floaters everyone and his brother probably has over time. I was having, in addition to the flashes of light, a mother lode of floaters in that eye.
And so, my less than 40 expert doctors, in a soft discreet tone, let me know that this was something that happened, when you. . . .age. In time, and soon it seems, all the little now brittle pieces of old spongy material will fall somewhere in my eye and be no more.
What does it mean? It means that I am running through Shakespeare's seven ages of man far faster than I'd like. I said recently in these pages that I don't feel any different than I did thirty years ago. And then something like this happens. My vitreious separates and I am chastened.
But my friends who remonstrate. I shall try not to mention our age. Really. Until something else I know not yet of, separates. Oh, oh.
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