Flashes and Floaters

[Michelle08194]

Hi. I am a 16 year old female and for the past month or two I have been getting lots of floaters. I'd say there's atleast 5 or so in each eye, maybe more cause they're hard to count. Black dots, and lots of long squigly lines, sometimes bunches of lines together. I also get flashes, mostly in my pererphrial and usually in darker places. I didn't get flashes until a couple of weeks after I noticed the floaters. They are usually outines of objects I'm looking at in different colors. The white part of my eyes that used to always be very white is starting to get more red in it too. Anyways I think it sounds a bit like a retinal tear, although I don't know what would of caused it since I'm 16 and haven't had any head injuries. My family doesn't seem to think it's anything serious so I've been waiting over a week already for my eye apointment and there's still over two weeks left to wait. So I'm just wordering if this seems like anything seroius and what could be the cause of all these floaters and flashes. Thanks   

[kjelltp]

"My family doesn't seem to think it's anything serious"...It's your eyesight, they should have you checked at an eye MD right away, not 2 weeks from now.

[Ray T Oyakawa, MD]

Yes, this is very serious.  Retinal detachment can occur at you age.

Dr. O.