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Markie

?optic neuritis

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Markie

HELLO all :wavebunny: and a big thank you for the welcome posts received so far. Tried sending a similar message before but not sure where it went!!! Well here we go again. Ann has been having intermittent eye sight problems which have got worse over the last 6 months. She has developed a daily/ permanent focus issue in as much if we get to close to her say 18 inches then this causes her probs and makes her feel ill, thought it was my facial hair for a while :rant: This also coincides with what Ann describes as looking through steam like being in a sauna with some colour loss. This can vary from a few second to an hour and is on and off but occurs most days. She also has problems with moving object and judging distance at times. hence not driving since about october last year. She has no real pain but lately has becone aware of some discomfort if she looks down and moves her eyes especially the left. D o you think this could be the start of ON. We are going to make an appointment with our optician to see what her thinks prior to seeing the neuro. Any advise would be appreciated. We have got quite jumpy since all this started, whats linked and whats not and what do you ignore :wavebunny:

:elephant: MARK and ANN xx

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Michelle

Again there are others better to help here than I.. I was admitted into hospital before christmas.... due to blurred vision and numbness to my head.. Beofre treatment with steroids i was experiencing just blobs of colour..i could not make out shapes...

I know that when i was admitted two doctors could not see my fundus in my left eye.. Apparently the optic nerve becomes inflammed...

As i had multi focal white matter lesions on my brain it was also felt that these were causing some of my blurred vison..

I know that Gaynor and a few others have had problems with the ON and like myself Gaynor was treated with steroids to help with the eyesight..

I am also long sighted so if someone gets to close to me I have to ask them to back off :halo: I get the smae with reading material.. I have glasses that help with close up work.. But when the eyesight was bad not even this helps..

I have had to stop driving due to the vision probs and along with a few others on the site are waiting to hear from the dvla....

Amazingly, I can undertake close up work since my treatment....

Eg; I have had to do several hours of study this evening, and read a case history about a person with depression.. I haven't used my glasses once...

 

Hope this helps in some way...

 

Michelle :cheerleader:

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ddgorgeous

I had a good link about Optic Neuritis and seem to remember posting it on the forum, I will see if I can find it again.

 

I started having some double vision in 2000, it was the very first symptom and MS was eventauly diagnosed. I was not aware of having any kind of squint, but you will be able to tell quite if Ann has even a small one easily with the aid of a torch or artificial light.

 

Switch the torch on and hold it anywhere near you, but not pointing at Ann's eyes. You will see two small white dots of light when you look at Ann's eyes. Try not to look at Ann's pupils, or where she is looking, but look for the two little dots, one on each eye. These are just the reflections of the torch.

 

Ask Ann to move her eyes from one side to another. The dots would be stationary if the eyes were perfectly spherical. The eyes are not spherical, but more oval shaped, so the dots will move. In a person with normal eyes and vision, the dots would move together, but if one eye is moving out of synch with the other, you will see the littls dots move slightly differently and not as a pair. It can be done with the reflection of natural light from a window etc, it does not need to be a torch.

 

My own GP did not know this, it was an Opthalmologist who told him about it, he was amazed, as eyes normally move together.

 

Now dim the lights, give it a few seconds for Ann's eyes to adjust to the new light and shine the light in one eye. Pupils normally constrict, or dilate as a pair, even if light is only shone in one eye. The brain computes this. In MS, the eyes very often operate individually, so one eye would dilate, but the other would not. When th elight is shone in the other eye the same thing can happen. My own GP was amazed when he saw this, as he was not aware that it could happen.

 

The double vision occurs because the muscles that control the rear of the eye are possibly not moving the eye correctly. If you close one eye, you only get one view and the double vision will go (you cannot get 2 views from one eye), but you cannot judge distance or speed. Hold a pencil out and ask Ann to touch the end of it with one eye closed. She will not be able to tell how far away it is and may well miss it for a couple of attempts. It takes the binocular vision of two eyes to judge how far away something is. After about a year of only having one eye, judging distances etc become much easier and a person could drive again, but they are not normally permitted for a year or so.

 

The eyes tend to jump across a line of text instead of reading it smoothly. An Optician or Opthalmologist will be able to tell you much more about it, I am just going through some of the things that I was affected by.

 

Ron :cheerleader:


ppms, dx 2001

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Markie

Morning Ron, was in bed when you replied. Your post made some interesting reading and i will try out some of those tests. Not sure about getting to close with a torch to check pupils , may leave that to the optician in case i put her offas bright lights hurt her eyes a little. Ann has had episodes of double vision in the past few months. But her symtoms are varied she was slightly short sighted anyway but very rarely wore glasses , usually only for reading. What has been happening lately on a few occaisions is that she can be long sighted all morning and have great difficuties with really close things and the the vision can go the other way and she can only see 10 tf in front. The reading text comment is right she is having difficulty,and has said for a few years that words and lines can merge at times but not as bad as now. This is causing a few problems on her computer course but Anns getting through it. Thanks again. Mark & ANN. XX

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Gaynor

Hi Ann & Mark,

 

Ok what you describe sounds very familiar, the pain on moving the eyeball, and the cloudiness/fog vision. Pain on moving the eyeball is classic for ON but my experience of it was different.

 

I had perfect vision, no glasses and then the first things I noticed was that it felt like I had something in the eye, it was annoying and didn't go away but nothing could be seen to be annoying it. Then the clarity started to go and I was heavily using the right eye to do all the work. This carried on and by the end of a week or so I couldn't use it to do anything - I could just about make out if it was light or dark. However bright lights (I mean fluorescents)were very uncomfortable to be in.

 

The first trip to the docs part way through that time revealed no damage or scratches to the eyeball and I was told come back in 3-5 days if this was any worse. Anyway I got more and more uneasy about it and worried so went back on the Monday morning. (I have to point out I was in Germany - we are forces).

 

Anyway when I told the Doc I could barely see a rectangular picture on his wall and certainly nothing in it - colours, shapes or anything he immediately sent me to the Opthalmic clinic. They were fantastic there and diagnosed the ON. I then had to go to Hosp for what I thought would be a few tabs and a check-over........ but oh no I was admitted and tested to the full over the 4 days I stayed there. At the end of the stay came the MS news :cheerleader: and as you can imagine such a shock.

 

Well anyway with IV steroids and time the eye about 95% recovered and I passed all the vision tests to be able to drive again so obviously I was relieved about that.

 

So that's my story and experience of it. Obviously the difference we have is that IF it is ON with Ann;- it has been a very gradual decline and not 2wks -ish as mine was. So possibly there may well be an alternative cause or it completely something different as like Ron has described.

 

Hope I've helped a little,

 

Gaynor

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Markie

Thank you Gaynor , and good morning. we will try to get an appointment at the opticians, if only to get some answers . You just get so jumpy at the least little thing and make allsorts of links. If he sees anything that is linked then at least we will have another papertrail for our records. Ann is not bothered what the eventual diagnosis is MS or what ever, just so long as she knows what has blown her life apart. She had to get out of the bath last night due to eye and face pain when she looked down.

 

 

:cheerleader: mark & ANN

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ddgorgeous

Markie,

 

I doubt I am explaining this very well. Forget the torch, you can do this in any room with the light that comes in from the window, or a ceiling light, or just about any licht source.

 

At almost anytime in any room you will see the two little white dots on a person's eyes, it is the light reflecting off the eyes. If you watch when they move their eyes from side to side, the dots will not move together if they have a squint. If the eyes were perfectly spherical this would not work, but they are slightly oval, so if they do not move together you will clearly see a difference in the white dots when they do not move together.

 

I found the website mentioned above, http://www.jandoerffel.de/on.htm It is all about ON and may give you some more information.

 

Two years ago I had a spell of my eyes drifting. If I was in a dark room at night trying to sleep. The clock had green numbers. I would see the numbers drift to one side, but after a minute they would jump back towards where they should be. It all happened pretty quickly and the light from the clock would seem to constantly jump left and right.

 

When I asked the Optician about it, it was due to the muscle behind the eye not pulling the eye to where it should have been, but once it got so far, the muscle would pull it back into place quickly and then it would start to drift again. It meant the light from the clock would go left and right all the time and never stay still.

 

I still get this all the time, but not to the same extent. Each time I blink, the views almost come together, but then one starts to drift. If I blink again, it comes back to almost one, but starts to drift again and goes on like that all the time.

 

It is VERY frustrating and watching TV, reading, using the PC, everything is always in double vision with one view always moving. I have an eye patch that sorts the two views back to one, but I cannot judge distances and constantly miss doorhandles etc.

 

I hope that one day I waken up and it is normal again and it goes like it came, but it is into it's sixth year now!

 

Ron :cheerleader:


ppms, dx 2001

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Gaynor

Yes Mark I can understand and remember the difficulty of looking down or closely say at your chest or whatever.... ooh god it's very unpleasant. :cheerleader:

 

Also yes of course you need some answers to find out the root cause for all these problems Ann's having. The anxiety and stress may reduce slightly then too (for both of you) once you know what's going on.

 

Gaynor

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Markie

Hi Gaynor, we have just got back from town. made appointment for monday for opticians. Although we are stressed a little ,,, it has been far worse. My problem is that i know to much and am aware of the possible problems. :cheerleader: Not sure if I've mentioned the looking down bit !!!! think i have. Ann was really bad after doing that last week , her chin didn't even make it to her chest. NOT NICE AS YOU SAY. Frightened me, never mind Ann, it shook her up quite bad that night. although we have not got any answers and are waiting 'in limbo ' as some of you have put it. The very fact that we can post a question is appreciated. We are aware that anything we ask has probably been asked many many times . ALL your patience is appreciated .

:halo: Mark & ANN

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Gaynor

Well we're all here to try and support each other :cheerleader:

 

Gaynor

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