When eye floaters signal "Emergency"

[dixiegrrrrl]

Tuesday around noon I suddenly noticed vision blurring and large floater in my right eye.
The floater turned into a peripheral vision white flash if I was in a dark room.
Thinking it might be the same kind of "ocular migraine" I had had 10 years ago, I waited till the next morning to see if it had gone away.
Nope.
So wikkied the problem, read where it said "detached retina" symptoms, including the bit about getting the eye checked out within 24 hours to minimize risk of blindness.
That woke me up.
Called eye doc, they got me in a few hours later, got the vision exam.

Good news...it was "posterior vitreous detachment"
Bad news: it can lead to detached retina, especially in us "older" folks.
Doc ( and wikki) provided vision symptoms to watch out for.

Bad news: We have no insurance.
Good news: We live in an area of good affordable rural medicine.
A lengthy eye exam, and new pair of reading glasses, including frames, was just under 300.00.

Also I found a web page that has eye charts to use to check for stuff like this.

http://www.mdsupport.org/eyetests.html

Keeping fingers crossed there are no further symptoms, because I will have to drive to the "big city" 90 miles away for any needed treatment. This I do not want to do.

Sigh...older I get , the faster the learning experiences come at me.