Hi all. I am 45 years old and have had floaters as long as I can remember. I had lasik surgery 5 years ago to correct severe myopia. In the last 6 months I have developed a very large floater in my left eye that goes almost from top of my vision to the bottom. I have noticed that I blink my eyes, squeeze them shut, or roll them around to try to clear my vision when driving or reading. Sometimes shutting the left eye completely to finish a sentence. Glaucoma runs in my family so I am going to make an appointment to have my eyes checked to make sure it is just a floater. That said, I really was just wondering how other folks deal with reading/driving with large floaters. Does anything help?

Hi,

I posted about this in another thread so maybe you read my post already but I can't think of anything that helps with keeping the floaters out of your line of vision. For almost 4 years now I have a big floater in my right eye (some smaller ones,too) swinging back & forth in my line of vision like a spider on a thread. I do the eye blinking and rolling, too, to get it the heck out of the middle of my vision. That works for a minute or so but then it swings right back. I've learned to live with it and you will, too.

When I went to the Opthomologist about the floaters in 2003, he was examining my eyes and said my optic nerve looked funny. Further tests showed I have glaucoma (normal tension glaucoma) in both eyes that probably wouldn't have been found in time to save my vision if not for the floaters. So in a way, I'm glad for that "spider" there in my eyeball!

BTW, the floaters are not related to the glaucoma in any way. If glaucoma runs in your family, it's a good idea to get checked, anyway. With my normal tension glaucoma, my pressure was always OK when the eye pressure test was done. Only by checking my optic nerve (shining a bright light in my eye) while there for the floater problem, and then a field test did I get the diagnosis of glaucoma. Better safe than sorry. Good luck!

I have arthritis and I had innflamation in my eye when I was younger and this caused floaters in my eyes. I have had them for about 8years now. I find that using coloured background sheets help. Blue is very good for when u are reading. Try going to staples or somewhere and buying coloured see thru sheets to place on top of any writing and see which colour suits you.

Floaters and flashes are a characteristic sign of retinal detachments, ask your optician to dilate your eyes and complete an ophthalmoscopy (viewing back of the eye) and also to perform a visual field assessment because if your retina has detached you may have parts of your vision missing that you may be unaware of

My partner suffers from ulcerative colitis. (inflammation of the bowel etc) when he is having a flare up, he complains of floaters. When he mentioned this to his doctor, his doctor said that floaters can be caused by imflamatory conditions.