Not me, but one of my good friends was rushed to surgery last week with a detached retina. He had been seeing “floaters” in his right eye for several days and then suddenly what he described as a gray curtain descended in that eye and completely blocked his vision. Doctor said he had waited too long to be examined and could have lost the sight in that eye.

But the good news is, the surgery was a success. Lots of post-op do’s and don’ts, however, including having to lie on one side for a week and then the other side for another week.

I knew someone who had a retina detach like that also. Not something to mess with.

I worked with someone who dealt with it over 35 years ago when he was about 45. He talked about seeing stars and lights and figured it was stress or drinking…. until it got bad enough for him to finally go to the doc.
Sadly, I am sorry to say, it did not end well. :-(
At least he got permanent disability.

I have various issues related to my diabetes. I am undergoing treatments every 4–6 weeks that involve me getting an injection in my eye. Not a detachment or tearing like the examples above, but scar tissue from past bleeding. Also, when the bleeding reoccurs, I have bad floaters that slowly dissipate and cause my vision to be blurry/foggy for a time.

@msh I have a condition called “lattice retinal degeneration”. Picture a lattice, and there are thinner areas on the retina. One of these thinner areas detached a few years ago. I had sudden onset of larger dark floaters. I sought help immediately and it took the ophthalmologist a while to locate the detachment. He referred me to a retinal specialist who did surgery. If you have a detachment, the sooner you get treatment the better the results are likely to be! I had very good results. Any sort of eye symptoms warrant investigation ASAP.

A couple of friends of mine have had detached retinas so when a large black floater suddenly appeared in my left eye accompanied by a myriad black dots that filled my field of view I saw an opthalmologist to have it checked. It wasn’t a detached retina and it was apparently nothing to be concerned about. What I was experiencing was a “post vitreous detachment” which is a normal part of aging when the jelly in the eye shrinks and pulls away from the retina. While this can cause the retina to tear it usually only brings on a swarm of floaters and mine mostly disappeared within a week. Incidentally experiencing occasional coloured flashes is a sign that the jelly is tugging at the retina and again is nothing to worry about. Dark curtains that fall across your field of view obscuring vision are a sign of a detached retina and should be reported at once to your optician as delay can result in blindness.

I have pigmentary glaucoma and am slowly going blind. I had started to get large, dark floaters and sparkling blue lights in my eyes and, because I’ve been diabetic most of my life, I went my doctor and told him I suspected glaucoma. He sent me to an eye clinic and they didn’t find anything. My doctor acted like I was hypochondriac so I stopped bringing it up.

Five years later I started suddenly seeing five of everything one night and ended up in the emergency room. Turns out I had pigmentary dispersion syndrome (a very rare form of glaucoma), and I’d had it so long that it had already done significant damage to my optic nerves. The thing is, as long as there’s even a few nerves left, you can have perfect vision. But when the last few are gone, you’re blind. I had experienced so much nerve loss that when the pressure increased in my eye that night, my optic nerves started misfiring.

I take eyedrops to slow the damage, which might save my vision long enough for something else to kill me before I go blind, but I have to be cautious about exercise, high-impact sports, or getting truncheoned in the head by police because my condition is caused by a malformation of the eye which causes pigment from the iris to be scraped off (leaving odd colourless areas in my iris), which forms a slurry and blocks the trabecular meshwork which is supposed to drain fluid from the eye. Any impacts can cause bits of pigment to break off and cause the pressure in my eye to shoot up, killing what few nerves I have left.