[masraum]

My understanding from when it happened to my wife and the Doc described it to us is as follows.

There's a sack full of fluid in your eye that is lightly attached around the inside of the eye ball (kind of like the occasional spot weld). As I understand it, the sack shrinks when we get old, and the spot welds start letting loose. If that's all that happens, it's no big deal, and happens to everyone. The problem is if the spot weld doesn't pull away from the retina, but tries to bring the retina with it.

I heard that the bright flashes were likely the result of the spot welds letting loose or maybe tugging on the retina or something like that (not necessarily an indication of a problem, just a symptom of the state of the eye and what's going on.

It's not really until/unless the retina tears that you've got a problem.

We had a highly recommended optometrist (hot too) check my wife out and then recommend a retina specialist (who she also sent her mother to for retina issues). So I think we (the missus) had a good retina person working on her.