[yorkietalkjilly]

Please get to see a specialist in macular problems. I hesitate to post this as it may not be your situation but read it as a warning. I hope you won't wait about getting two specialists' opinions. I don't want to scare you - your situation is likely totally different but consider my situation.

I had floaters for years, then the lightening and zizzy circles in the edge of my vision and then one day, everything looked very strange in my right eye. I realized I could no longer see straight lines normally - they were bent and things I focused on were quite thin and abnormally distorted. Went to a macular specialist who said I had a tear in the macula from a congenital condition. Wait and see. 9 mos. later the distortion was so bad I had to have surgery and by then, the damage was done and surgery resulted in legal blindness in the right eye - huge gray defect in the central vision where I see nothing though I have peripheral vision. The specialist told me the lightening and zizzy looking things were ocular migraines from a congenital retinal partial detachment I'd had all my life - never found by my eye doctor before because finding it took special testing the specialist did. The retinal detachment had loosened with age and torn more, the healing caused tightening and scarring to pull on the macula, stretch it, strain it and then tear it.

Nine years later, same thing happened in the left. This time I got to the doctor on Christmas Eve, the morning after symptoms started and had surgery 3 days later. Have some distortion in the central vision after the surgery but no blindness.

Eventually within 2 years, I developed severe cataracts from the macular surgeries and after both were removed and corrective lenses implanted, I see better than I ever have in my life! I have occasional 15/20 vision in the left eye even with the distortion and the peripheral vision in my right eye is excellent - and it helps my left eye focus better now it's been corrected with a good lens! Even though I am blind in the right eye, I actually have the best overall vision I ever had, even with corrective glasses which I used to have to wear to drive or watch TV. No more glasses after the lens implants except to read!!! I now drive and watch TV and see far off with no glasses at all.

I do have a muscle problem in the right eye now from the blind portion that keeps the eye from trying to focus so it wanders and that makes reading very hard as I see a good deal of double things but am seeing my second opinion doc on that next month (just got my first opinion) and already know I'm having surgical correction which is about a 5 min. procedure when the surgeon can schedule it next month.

SO GO TO A MACULAR SPECIALIST and then see a second one. Early intervention is often key here. If that first macular specialist hadn't waited on the right eye, I would likely have not lost the macular central vision there - but that is old history now. I have lived and learned. Get to a specialist and then get a second opinion of another good macular specialist. Had I gotten a second opinion I probably would have had early right eye surgery before my macula was too far gone.

It may all just be retinal and nothing macular but a mac specialist can treat that, too. Waiting and doing nothing can be your eyes' worst enemy - take it from someone who has been there and whose sister is blind from macular degeneration and with a grandmother who we now know must have also had severe macular problems. She and my sister and I all started with floaters, then the lightening, then the black spots. Black spots usually indicate little bleeds that come from bits that have torn or detached but not always. But don't fool around with your eyes seeing just a regular eye doctor or even a single macular specialist. See two and see them soon! I pray you don't have a serious condition and the lightening and such are just retinal oopsies and age related as many people have. But don't wait or assume nothing bad is happening where eyes are concerned. Please.