Rare occurrance - eye doc caught
I was being tested for my macular degeneration when I explained to my doctor that all of a sudden while watching TV I noticed that I was having difficulty seeing out of one eye. I covered one eye that I could see out of and I could not see out of my left eye at all, there was a fuzzy haze completely covering it. There was no peripheral vision either. It remained this way for about 30 minutes then disappeared. No other symptoms. According to my eye doctor, he told me I was having an occular migraine in that one eye. He said it's unusual, but it happens. Now, it the coloring was completely black, then get myself to an ER as that could mean a stroke. Now he got my attention. I told him that my mother once had a stroke in one of her eyes and he said that he saw no blood in my eye. He just asked me to report this to my neurologist.
Has anyone here experienced anything like this?
Hi Jo1950,
Thank you for your question. I've not had any experience with this but hopefully others will be along shortly to share their experiences with you.
Have you followed up with your neurologist? If not I would encourage you to as soon as you are able. Will you let us know how you make out?
Nancy
I just sent off an email to my neurologist asking him about this and will let you know his response.
Debbie
I get these quite often. It’s worst when you’re driving, because it throws off your depth perception. But, it is “just an ocular migraine.” Mine usually have little to no pain associated, last 20-45 minutes and come in groups, meaning I get one, I know I’ll have another one or two within the following day or so. A real, painful migraine almost always follow once my vision returns to normal. Then, they just stop for weeks/months at a time. I’ve talked with two of my neurologists and my eye doctor about it. None of them seemed concerned.
I also have atypical/complex migraines where the entire right side of my body goes numb/stops working. I still have motor skills, but my senses just turn off. No sight, sound, touch and my smeller and taster don’t work well on a normal basis anyway, so who knows about them haha. But lots of tests, CTs, MRIs, EEGs, EKGs...basically they checked for it all...and said, “just a migraine”. Serene Branson made these migraines famous; if you get bored and want to Google it. She was a reporter who had one on air for the first time.
Anyway, my ocular migraines differ from the complex migraines, because I see a shimmer of light with my ocular ones, not total fuzzy darkness like with the complex migraines. With my ocular ones, it’s like there’s a really bright light stuck right in front of my right eye only, that I can’t move out of the way to see behind. I can still see stuff around the edges of it, but it’s all fuzzy and bright. I’m not sure if this is considered an aura or not, in terms of migraine.Hi nikkig127,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, it's good to hear from you!
I did want to mention a word about 'ocular' and/or complex migraine attacks. These are not official diagnostics terms according to the International Headache Society's International Classification of Headache Disorders, which is the gold standard for diagnosing migraine disease. "Officially" it may be migraine with aura. This type of migraine attack can have many, many symptoms including numbness and tingling, visual, sensory disturbances, trouble finding and pronouncing words and others. Let me share these articles that describe this type of migraine attack; https://migraine.com/migraine-types/migraine-with-aura/.
You're not alone - about 25% of people with migraine disease experience migraine with aura.
We look forward to hearing more from you,
Nancy
I have a similar occurrence just about every night. When I turn out the lights to go to bed I notice my right eye is fuzzy. It's always the right eye. Everything is darker in that eye, like I'm looking through a dark sheer curtain, especially my peripheral vision. When I have the light on I don't notice it. I keep forgetting to mention it to my eye doc and neuro since I never notice it when the lights are on. I already have my eyes scanned every year since I have CHRPEs (freckles) in both eyes, my eye doc hasn't seen anything different though. I'll have to remember to write down that I need to tell my neuro about this, and the nonexistent strobe light I keep seeing flash just outside of my field of vision. I am getting really tired of getting up to exit work for a fire drill only to realize the fire alarm isn't going off.
