Watch your eyeballs!

Aging comes with many annoyances.  Most come with signs and symptoms, or preventive checks from various markers could provide an early heads-up to cause some level of panic. But the most insidious types are those where NOTHING is noticed.

If one were to poke the eyeball, do we feel pain?  In some movies, a person is being tortured with some scary looking object, threatening to pierce the eyeball. We feel so much pain even before it has breached.  Cringe.  But it seems there is no sensation to be felt on the eyeball itself?

In any case, it was a serendipitous circumstance that led wifey to pay a visit to an ophthalmologist. Turns out the amazing scanner the ophthalmologist had picked up an object floating above the retina. It looked like a UFO flying above a planet when a picture of it is taken from outer space.

Turns out she had experienced a retinal tear without detachment.  No sensation whatsoever.  When asked what the consequence could be, we were told, "Blindness". That sure was an absolute bummer.

The good news was, the doc could fix it.  All it needed was to laser around the torn area to fuse it back.  We were lucky it was detected early.  All hail modern science!

And when asked when could we get it done, he said, "Immediately". Wah! One hour and with temporary blurred vision later, wifey emerged from the procedure at the hospital laser lab at the next building, all done.

Seems like it could be covered by the Integrated Shield Plus programme that wifey had too. Fully covered.  And it was a breeze as the hospital admission could simply do an "E-filing".  No additional information was required. Easy breezy.  All hail Smart Nation and digitised government healthcare system!

Watch your fragile eyeballs!