I tore a retina almost 8 years ago. I had flashes and floaters Saturday afternoon and evening and caught an ophthalmologist friend between church services the next morning. He told me to see his vitreoretinology specialist friend the following morning. "Tell the office I sent you and that they need to squeeze you in somehow."

On Monday morning, after joking with me about "looking through my dirty fishbowl" of an eyeball, the VR doc. finally found a small tear in the outer fringe of the retina. Evidently, this sort of thing comes with the territory when one is myopic (-7 diopters in both eyes, in my case). I went to his other, larger office that afternoon and had cryotherapy to glue the retina down to the back of the eyeball, so that it would not detach. All the time he apologized for having to go this route, rather than laser repair, because the tear was so far out on the edge.

The floaters have not gone away, but I have no other visual impairments. My biggest problem was that my employer folded at about that same time, thrusting me abruptly into the private health insurance marketplace. (There is no COBRA when your employer goes bankrupt.) Blue Cross rejected me because of the recent retinal tear, but fortunately Blue Shield took me at standard rates -- they evidently understood there is a difference between a detached retina and a slightly torn one.