I DREAM OF RETINAL DETACHMENT

Last night I dreamt that my right eye’s retina became detached. I saw the flashes and everything! Colorful, bright and bursting like the Fourth of July. I took my eyeball to the nearest optometrist I could find, and he informed me that it might be better if I take my eyeball to someone who knew what they were doing. My poor eyeball.

This is not the first time that I’ve dreamt of retinal detachment. A couple of weeks ago I woke up in horror as I recalled from my dreams a black, buggy parasite burrowing deeper into the vitreous of my eyeball. Floaters are associated with retinal detachment. Until then, I had only recognized the disgusting creature as a harmless, opaque floater.

Since then, I can’t help but experience a chill down my spine whenever a particularly large and ghostly floater glides across my field of view. If I dream of retinal detachment, does that mean that it’s more likely to occur? I can pinpoint the exact floater that’s scaring me, too.

A little voice in the back of my head is nagging me to get a dilated fundus exam at school, but another voice is telling me that I’m simply suffering from the stress and paranoia of being an optometry student. I think I heard somewhere that med students become the same way, self diagnosing themselves with far fetched diseases and syndromes in their otherwise healthy body. Then again, maybe my body is trying to tell me something and that’s why I’m dreaming of retinal detachment! Or could it be that retinal detachment is a twisted metaphor for the more deep-seated problems in my life? But why retinal detachment? And why now?

Signs that you may suffer from RD:
-Bright and unexplainable flashes of light
-Sudden onset of a shower of floaters.
-May be due to trauma or diabetes.