I hate to be the pessimist here, but given you’re diabetic, I would think it’s most likely diabetic retinopathy. I certainly hope I’m wrong, but the odds are there.
If you got a bleed in your eye, the blood will basically dissipate into the vitreous (interior eye “jelly”), and it looks like you’re looking out through a cloud of smoke. The bigger the bleed, the bigger the obscurance. The good news is that it sounds like a small bleed that’s stopped already. If this is what it is, your vision will restore as soon as all the blood breaks down.
You’re doing the best thing you can by not ignoring it and setting up an appointment, so you can stop it in its tracks.
This seems to be a common topic of conversation lately, including my own, since I’m dealing with the same thing. I keep hearing “average” is 20-25 years for diabetic retinopathy to pop up. I lasted 32 years without this particular complication myself.
Treatment is really promising, though, especially if they catch it early. Sometimes they can reverse the damage altogether, and they can stop it from progressing and continuing to bleed by zapping the troublesome blood vessels with lasers.
I actually had a really bad bleed about a month ago. So bad that they weren’t able to clearly image the eye, so couldn’t decide on a treatment yet. I had to wait 3 weeks for some of the blood to dissipate before they could continue. I went back last Thursday, and was worried it still wouldn’t be clear enough, since my vision was still obscured. I was surprised when he told me how great I was doing and that it was actually clearing really fast and he was able to see all he needed. He said these can take months to clear sometimes, but my experience with really small bleeds is that it just takes a few days.
I got an injection of Avastin in each eye. It’s a off-label use of a cancer medication that shrinks inflammation, shrinks blood vessels, and stops new ones from forming. That sounds way scarier than it really is. It was actually painless, just a little (okay, a lot) freaky. I’m scheduled to get a repeat again in about a month, and then after that they can finally do the lasering.