These "floaters" are drivin' me nuts!

[genealogynut]

Does anyone have any helpful hints on how to deal with the "floaters" that annoy a person?  For those who don't know what "floaters" are, they're dark shadowy spots that float around in your eye and interrupts with a person's vision.  They are common in middle-aged persons and seniors.  Mine remind me of a spider dangling on a web swinging around in front of my eye.

[LShortt]

I have them also.    My Optometrist basically told me to grin and bear it...and maybe pray that it would move.  Chances are slim they will totally go away. 

[genealogynut]

Common reaction and instinct makes me want to "bat that spider away"....if people seen me do that, they'd have me in the "booby hatch!" But then......I guess I don't have far to go, to get to the nut house. I think I'm most of the way there, now. Thanks, sunflower, for your post.

[Joanna]

I've had floaters for years, one I even recognize that looks like a dog's hind leg.  HA!  For me it's more like a raindrop running on the windshield.  I can see it and it's an annoyance, but it's pretty easy to look around it too.  My opthamologist once told me that they're kind of like the flakes in a snowglobe and some people (me) are lucky because they 'settle' and stay closer to the sides of the eyeball.  He also said that excesive rough head movement might make them worse; I've never noticed that being a problem but I don't generally run jackhammers either....

[indygal]

How strange that this topic started. I've noticed during the last week or so that I've had a few little "floaters" and wondered what was going on. I don't notice it much while I'm indoors but they're quite visible if I'm outdoors on a sunny day. It's like I "see" a dark little squiggle just above my pupil and when I try to "focus" on it, it moves to another part of my eye. This, of course, sounds ridiculous: how can one see one's eyeball with that same eyeball unless you're looking in a mirror? All the same, that's how it seems to me. It's particularly bad if I've spent many hours staring at a computer monitor or a textbook, so I've just written it off as eye strain of some sort. Or it could be that it's a bit of "eye goo" that's picked up some mascara on its travels across my eye.

A little off topic, but when I was a kid I asked my mom if people could see with their eyes closed and was told "no." But I could "see" all sorts of weird shapes and colors, sort of like a lava lamp swirling around the insides of my eyelids. I'm still not positive what it really is. Does anyone know?

[Ms Bear]

The floaters went away with the cataract surgery and I don't miss them at all.  Now the only time I have them is if my blood pressure gets too high.  I remember they were very annoying when I was driving, especialy at night and early morning.

Hope you are having good weather today, I was able to get the lawnmower started and mow some weeds.  Now if I can just get the weed and feed out and it works the way it is supposed to.