This site exists for one moment that almost nobody writes about: you had your eyes checked, you were told everything looks normal, and you are still seeing the thing that made you book the appointment.
Who writes here
My name is Rhea Calder. I am a licensed optician, certified by the American Board of Opticianry since 2004, and I have spent nineteen years in an optometry practice in Tucson, Arizona. I take measurements, fit lenses, run the pre exam equipment and talk to patients before and after they see the doctor.
That last part is the reason this site exists. I am the person patients talk to on the way out, after the exam is over and the answer was “everything looks fine.” They tell me what they did not say in the exam room, usually because it sounded too small or too strange to bring up.
What I am, and what I am not
I am not an optometrist and I am not an ophthalmologist. I do not diagnose, I do not treat and I do not prescribe. What I can do is explain the mechanism behind a symptom in plain language, tell you what is common and what is not, and be specific about the point where a symptom stops being a curiosity and becomes a reason to be seen today.
Every page here says that. It is not a formality. In eye care the difference between annoying and urgent is real, and knowing where that line sits is the most useful thing I can hand you.
Why I care about this in particular
At 38 I spent a week seeing flashes in the corner of my left eye. I knew exactly what the possibilities were, and I still put off getting checked, because I was busy and because part of me did not want to hear the answer. It turned out to be a posterior vitreous detachment, which is common and in my case harmless. I have had floaters ever since. I know what that week felt like, and I write for the person having that week right now.
How the site is organized
Pages are grouped by what you are actually experiencing rather than by diagnosis, because you cannot search for a diagnosis you do not have yet. Floaters that appear with a specific trigger. Flashes. Blurry vision that comes and goes. Halos and night driving. Visual snow. Eyelid twitching. And the group that started it all, the one for people whose exam came back clean.
How each page is researched and checked is written out in our editorial policy. The limits of what this site can tell you are in the medical disclaimer.
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.