My Vision Explained publishes general educational information about eyes and vision. It is not medical advice, and reading it is not a substitute for being examined.
The short version
Rhea Calder is a licensed optician, not an optometrist and not an ophthalmologist. Nothing on this site diagnoses a condition, prescribes a treatment or tells you that your own symptom is safe. Only a clinician who has examined your eyes can do that.
What this means in practice
- Do not delay an eye exam because something you read here sounded reassuring.
- Do not stop, start or change any medication, supplement or treatment based on this site.
- Do not use this site to decide that a symptom is not worth mentioning to your doctor. Mention it anyway.
- If you are already under the care of an eye doctor, follow their instructions over anything written here. They have seen your eyes and we have not.
When eye symptoms are an emergency
Most of what this site covers is harmless. A few things are not. Go to an emergency room or call an eye doctor the same day if you have any of these:
- A sudden shower of new floaters, many more than you are used to, especially with flashes
- A curtain, veil or shadow moving across part of your vision
- Any sudden loss of vision, in one eye or both
- Flashes of light that keep going and do not settle
- Severe eye pain with halos around lights, headache, nausea or vomiting
- New vision changes after a blow to the head or the eye
Those can mean a retinal tear, a retinal detachment or acute glaucoma. Those are treatable when they are caught early and much harder to fix when they are not.
If you are not sure whether what you are experiencing belongs on that list, treat it as if it does and get seen. An urgent visit that turns out to be nothing is a good outcome.