Stretched retina - could tear - Help!

[desperatehousewife]

Went to optitians for first time in 4 years as have been getting lot of headaches. I don't need glasses, eyes are relatively healthy. But he said I had stretched retinas which could tear and I guess ultimately if left untreated lead to blindness. I'm only 35 and was so not expecting to hear anything like this. Am being refered to eye hospital to get specialist opinion.

Trying really hard to keep it in perspective and not panic, but am feeling a bit worried and don't really understand much about this or how quickly a problem could develop.

Any experience anyone...gratefully appreciated.

Thanks

Jabberwocky, didn't mean that "I'm in Ireland, actually" to sound so sniffy! Just that our health services are quite different ( Ireland's health service is terrible compared to UK) and though professionally, our qualifications are equivalent, there would be aspects of the UK health service with which I would not be familiar.

Ahh, I see. tbh the NHS sounds like the medicaid program in the US so can only try to imagine what Ireland is like

Hausfrau, IIRC, what Jac34 has might be more to do with the central vision rather than peripheral but not entirely sure if I remember correctly!

Sorry to Hi Jack this thread, but I have dormant ulcers on my cornea and also corneal scarring on both eyes can I still have laser treatment. I have an appointment booked for this thursday.

I think you're looking at PRK depending on how deep the scar tissue is.

Jabberwocky, in Ireland, anyone who can afford private healthcare would be advised to avail of it. The waiting lists here for operations are very long in the public healthcare system. This is propounded by the fact that there is no private healthcare "system". Private consultants and patients, are for the most part utilising the public healthcare system for a fee. This enables those of us with private healthcare to "jump the queue". With childbirth, where "jumping the queue" is less relevant because a baby will arrive when they are due to arrive regardless of the healthcare system, it means that Ireland has, in fact, a three tier system , private, semi-private and public. I would personally be afraid to use the public system, and when I went semi-private on ds1, it convinced me to go private on ds2 and ds3. With a normal delivery, where everything goes according to plan it makes little difference. But if things are complicated it makes a huge difference. Ds3 was very complicated and I thank God that I had private healthcare and a superb ObGyn. Otherwise I fear neither I nor ds3 would have been here to tell the tale.

Very interesting. I have mentioned to friends recently about what an education I have gotten on MN re: socialized medicine. While it is very unfortunate that we have so many people without health insurance in the US, we do, on the whole, receive quite good care in general. Things I have read such as waiting 13 weeks for a child of 2 to see and ENT make me shudder. That simply wouldn't happen here. Even if you had no insurance at all you could go to a county hospital and be seen in the emergency room.
I have read of your birth with ds3. I am so glad you went private. My own birth was unusually fraught with mistakes because I went an "alternate" route. With this baby, I am doing a standard "American" highly medical birth!