What A ‘Better’ Eye Bleed Looks Like

If you’re lucky. Bearing in mind this image is frozen still. In real life the bleed swirls around.

What you’re looking at is a scene of water and a mountain with willow branches and foliage by the water’s edge. That foliage and those branches are how doctors describe what happens – on a good bleed day – if a blood vessel or some other thing erupts inside the eye. “Like willow.” Those dark branches twist out into bunched strands, with free range wisps around them.

In other words, without the bleed, you would look at this view and not see any willow trees at all.

Now imagine those willows flashing around inside your eye and you can’t get rid of them. Every waking millisecond, if your eyes are open, they block your view, taunt you, and swirl around driving you nuts.

Then, after a day of this, even if you close your eyes you still see them: as shapes, because the eyelids don’t block out all the light.

It feels like the inside of your head has been possessed by the tentacles of an evil spirit. There’s just nothing you can do to get rid of them, to make it go away, or to make it stop.

There’s no colour. The blood in the eye appears black as sin.

I’ve taken a few photographs of what it’s like. This is the better bleed – the bleed you want to have if you are having a bleed. As it is, it is horrific (the bad ones are unimaginable).

I’ve now had three bleeds. Two in the left eye and one in the right eye. The right eye bleed was over twelve months ago – and remnants of those willows are still there. Lots. Apparently the blood breaks up and is absorbed back into the blood stream. This happens I’ve found after about two months. But going by both my eyes at the moment, I seriously doubt the break up and dissipation is complete.

I might have this forever. And if I get another bleed, it compounds. No fun at all. How I miss my clear sight!