The main symptoms that occur from this would be either blurred, double or complete loss of vision in either one of the eyes ( depending on which one gets 'attacked'). This too is usually one of the onset symptoms of MS and thus many (like me) MSers would be diagnosed after referrals from an ophthalmologist ( a medical doctor who specialises in eye care), an optician ( though the one I saw told me my glasses were dirty!) or even the GP to get further tests to check for nerve damage.
As discussed before, the nerve damage never completely recovers so this damage can leave a lasting damage with unclear vision and 'nystagmus'. This is basically when the pupils of the eyes randomly like to have a bit of a dance, Nystagmus most commonly causes the eyes to look involuntarily from side to side in a rapid, swinging motion rather than staying fixed on an object or person. Some nystagmuses, however, cause the eyes to jerk sideways or up and down.
The slightly scary stuff ( especially if your frightened of insects and horror movies!) is due to the nystagmus, your eyes may 'lie' to you, so with my experience; I thought there were beetles crawling all over my bedside wall and when I prepared to give them a whack, turned to see an empty plain wall as it was meant to be!
Not stopping there, if there is damage in other parts of the brain, it can lead to a transmission issue, so as when a human would see things, that message is sent to our brains to figure out what it is, and with damage in the right ( or wrong!) places, one could end up 'seeing' things because of the disruption and the 'short circuiting' analogy discussed earlier. So going past the pond near my house, the tree branches do look a bit like a scarecrow or a ghost on the initial look. Yes can be a bit frightening so the need to remind yourself your eyes are lying to you can be helpful! And focusing the eyes to see it's just a tree!
Last but not least, the makeshift medical advise to frighten you when you are already quite scared; because through my GCSEs and SATs and pretty much all my studies, I found online resources really helpful to revise and as you could probably guess, I am a bit of a nerd so I spent quite some time revising and because I used the computer, phone or even study without a lot of light so according to some, this was why my body decided to go AWOL. To add, the urge to itch the eyes were somehow making things worse along with the covering of the damaged eye with tissue being something supposedly problematic leaving me with old Indian remedies for 'relief' of symptoms which were laughed off and very much dis advised by the more professional doctors, and the need to learn how to ignore people after the many comments about wearing glasses meaning I should have perfect vision!
Whether you're enjoying things so far or not, we really are only getting started still! I think by the end you'd be experts at making caffeinated drinks!
Example of blurred vision on the left.
The lasting damaged vision difference between normal(left) and Optic neuritis (ON) eye.
A test given to check for vision issues, also used to test for colour blindness.
No comments:
Post a Comment