Vision is nothing to take for granted and all too often it’s one of the things that we seem to be troubled with as we age.

Our vision blurs. Possibly due to our eyes either stretching or contracting, changing their shape and the length of focus, resulting in farsightedness or nearsightedness. These are easily corrected with eyeglasses.

Many of us develop cataracts, a clouding of the lens. This is easily fixed with surgery and the implantation of new artificial lenses. Not only does this surgery restore clearer vision, but it allows the person to truer colors, since the natural lens in our eyes yellow with age. When I had cataract surgery, I noticed the biggest difference in blues and whites as they seemed much bluer and much whiter. It was especially noticeable since I had the first cataract several years before the second, so I could see the colors thru the yellowed lens in one eye and the new clear lens in the other.

Many older folks also experience glaucoma and some form of macular degeneration, both of which can lead to extreme loss of vision.

Additionally, many of us complain of different eye irritations. In many cases, the irritation is due to dry eyes or a lack of fluid being produced by the tear glands. Depending upon the cause of the dry eye, different eye drops can often help remedy the irritation.

With age, our eyes also tend to tire more easily, leaving us with some eye irritation in the evening. Spending a lot of time in front of a computer screen can cause eye fatigue. Trust me, I spend 10-14 hours a day in front of the computer doing research and writing and I often get tired and irritable eyes in the evening. Moisturizing drops help along with just closing the eyes for several minutes.

There are many ways our eyes can get irritated, but sometimes the irritation is chronic and your eye doctor has to look for unusual causes.

My wife recently complained that it constantly felt like she had a hair in her eye, so she managed to make an appointment with our eye doctor, who found that my wife had an eyelash that was curved and growing into the eye, causing the irritation. She (our eye doctor is a woman and she is very good and very thorough), plucked out the curved eyelash, making she sure she got the root in hopes it would not grow back.

A few weeks later, my wife said it felt like the hair was back in her eye and causing her a lot of eye irritation. On the day of writing this, my wife returned to the eye doctor who discovered a whole new problem causing the eye irritation. In fact, it was something the eye doctor had never seen in her career nor had she ever heard of before

It turned out that for some reason unknown to all of us, at the age of 67, my wife suddenly began growing an eyelash from a follicle on the inner surface of her eyelid. It obviously had never grown there before and according to the eye doctor the inner surface of the eyelid is not supposed to have any hair follicles.

Why it suddenly formed and began growing in such an unusually place? The eye doctor said that she knows that our bodies undergo a lot of changes as we age and sometimes there is no explaining some of those changes such as suddenly growing an eyelash on the inside of the eyelid.

I have to mention that my wife has always had very thin and light hair. Her hair was so thin that she often complained that it lacks any body and was too thin for many hairstyles she desired. One would think with her thin hair, which has thinned even more with age, would start growing new hairs in such unusual places.

So, if you have a chronic eye irritation and feeling like there is a hair in your eye, suggest to your eye doctor to look in the inside of the eyelids because you never know.