I’ve recently had an Ophthalmology review at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. I got a minor telling off for not having had a review for a while, but, as nice as they are there, it’s not exactly the highlight of my year!

Anyhow, the upshot was fairly mundane – my field of vision remains relatively unchanged (if a bit funky) and my central vision continues to slowly deteriorate. Nothing we can do about that so no point worrying too much I reckon, although I’ve perhaps noticed this  a bit recently.

I did get to try out a new eye scanner which was fun. It’s a bit like a cross between having an MRI scan and taking a photocopy of your eye. It’s quick, painless and at the end you get a 3D image of all the structures involved. Clever stuff indeed, and far removed from the old-school method employed when I was a kid involving crocodile clipping your eyelids open and shining disco light in your eyeballs for 20 minutes or so (I kid you not). Surprisingly, this was not all that enjoyable!

This is the type of image the new machine produces: –

I don’t have my own scan, but it looked something like this: –

The nice lady operating the device gave out a ‘hmmmm’ when looking at the results. I enquired if that was a good or bad ‘hmmm’ to which she just said ‘different, very different’. It seems that my left eye has a large area of the retina detached creating ‘something like a cave’. Detachment is common in my condition so it could be a new thing or it may have always been like that. It isn’t causing any major issue as it’s the layer’s below those detached that are more important, but it may partially explain why I favour my right eye!

There’s a good little video here that explains more about the scans if your interested..

There’s also now a possibility of getting some glasses – they can’t correct the acuity, but might be able to make things a little less fuzzy, so that’s worth a try.

Iain