Diabetic Retinapathy

Changes and damage to the blood vessels in the eye lead to Diabetic Retinapathy. This results from poor circulation that affects diabetics. The blood vessels will swell and/or leak and/or just clog enough that the body produces new vessels that are considered abnormal.
The doctors make this more complicated for a layman by talking about proliferative and nonproliferative diabetic retinapathy. To proliferate is to grow rapidly or in multiple amounts, so the terms boil down to whether the retinapathy is actively growing or not. The PRP treatment is used on the proliferative stages of the problem.
The retina processes light at the back of the eye to form the picture of what we see. Tiny blood vessels run throughout it. These blood vessels swell and become blocked. The retina gets less oxygen. The retina begins growing new "abnormal" blood vessels to provide oxygen. The problem is considered nonproliferative up until that point.
Retinapathy becoming proliferative seems something of a mislabel. New vessels already are actively growing in nonproliferative stages. That spreading in and of itself causes no vision loss. Those newer vessels, however, have weak walls and can leak blood either into the center of the eye or into the macular.
The condition typically gives no pain, just vision loss. The diabetic needs to pay attention to his vision.
Signs that diabetics need to watch out for:
flashers
floaters
distortions at edges
wavy lines at edges
darkness creeping in from the edges
I had none of these problems before I underwent the PRP procedure; I had simply suffered a blood hemorrhage that resulted from that "unsafe drop in blood pressure" that boner pill ads warn you about.