I went to see the eye doctor for my yearly check-up.

Two new things came up. First, like my mother did, I am now growing eyelashes on the inside of
my lower eyelid. They are growing inward, poking into the eyeball. In her later years, my mom
found out that she had around fifty lumps of scar tissue on the inner surface of her lower eyelids
due to those inwardly growing eyelashes (folks back then called the inner eyelid infections, styes,
back then). Hers always happened on the inner eyelid, not the outside skin of the eyelid, but the
doctors always told her they were the same and told her to treat them with hot compresses, held
against the closed eye. The heat caused the infected tissue around that hair to burst. It then
drained, but formed a pocket of scar tissue which, in later years, felt like she had something in her
eye which was scraping against her eyeball. It felt like grains of sand.

So my doctor clamped my head into one of those gizmos that holds your head steady while
they're examining the interior of your eye, and then rolled down my lower eyelid and used some
tweezers to pull out the offending eyelashes. Ten of then in my right lower lid, only two found in
the left. Hopefully, they won't grow back.

The other thing he found was that I have what appear to be fluid-filled cysts forming in the Macula
of my left eye (the central area of the Retina where the pupil is--the opening that lets in the light). I
had a scan of each eye, which he is sending to their Retina Department for analysis. They will
decide what needs to be done about that--either through laser treatment or, 'watch it and wait.'
That may take three weeks (the Retina Department serves the ninety mile area surrounding the
clinic).

charlie.

CORRECTION: I got the part about where the macula is, wrong. Here is a diagram of the eyeball,
showing the location of the Macula. What the eye doctor saw, looking at the macula straight-on, was
a series of light circular spots. The fluid inside the cysts, reflecting the light. (See attachment)