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SO. This past week, I was working at my computer when the vision in my right eye suddenly went out. When this was followed by a throbbing headache, I called my doctor and she immediately scheduled both an optometrist visit and an MRI for me (she doesn't fuck around, I love her).
It took the optometrist about ten seconds to diagnose me: according to him, I have Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), which sounds hella made up but is very much a thing (and becoming more common during the pandemic). https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/eye-and-vision-conditions/computer-vision-syndrome
Basically, staring at screens all day does two things. One, it forces the muscles in your eye to remain tense for hours. It also forces your eyes to dry out (you apparently blink 80% less when using your computer). This caused my eye muscle to spasm, thus the loss of vision.
(When I told my optometrist that I was a film critic and asked a few questions about the safest way to watch movies, he went into a big tangent about Russell Crowe's recent MASTER AND COMMANDER tweet and how they don't make good movies anymore. But I digress.)
So how do you manage CVS? Optometrists have what they call the 20-20 rule - iunderstoodthatreference.gif - which means that for every 20 minutes you spend on a screen, you need to spend 20 seconds looking out your window/letting your eyes relax by focusing on something far away.
So, morale of the story: if you, like me, spend most of your day - and most of your evenings - working in front of a screen, build in regular breaks. Use eyedrops. And give your poor eyes a rest, otherwise they WILL throw a fucking fit and scare the hell out of your family.
(Oh, and the MRI also came back negative. Which is a relief! And now my brain has pictures of itself. Which is a weird sentence to think about.)
