Au101
18-04-13, 17:10
Hello everyone :) Newbie here. I have a bit of a problem with anxiety in general and hypochondria particularly and one of the things that's been playing on my mind recently is my vision. It started with a few aches and pains over Christmas which made me start worrying about MS or something like that - which, of course, also effects vision. My worries about that have largely died down recently, but (I don't know if it's just general tiredness, stress, etc.) worries about my eyesight have persisted and also with tiredness comes headaches, and it's difficult not to think about tumours.
Anyway, about a month ago the final straw came when i noticed a couple of black spots as I was in bed. They went away after I got up and turned the light on and haven't come back since, but I went to the doctors. I described my other general visual concerns, such as visual snow and floaters and things - as well as this incident - and he said he couldn't see anything to worry about, I was probably just experiencing floaters and I guess those mysterious black spots weren't anything to worry about. But he did recommend I book a routine appointment with an optician - just to be on the safe side. I did that, and my optician said that there was nothing wrong with my eyes that he could see and the most likely explanation for the other visual phenomena I've been concerned with were migraines caused by stress. So I went home feeling happy and have largely been able to ignore the odd floater or whatever since.
This morning, though, I woke up at about 09:00 (I'm a student so this is early for me!). The blind was closed, so it wasn't brightly lit, but it wasn't dark, i could see fine. After rousing myself, I sat up and as i turned my head, I noticed a flash of light out of the corner of my eye, against my white pillow. A little worried, I looked to where I thought i'd seen it and slowly turned my head to the left, away from the pillow, which I was looking down at, and towards the wall, so that I was looking at the pillow out of the corner of my eye, with my pupil as perpendicular to my nose as the human eye can manage. As I did this I noticed a clear blind spot, an obvious dark grey spot, clearly showing against the white pillow, like the picture in the wikipedia article on Scotomas. I tried to reproduce the effect and managed, then I tried the other eye and I couldn't quite manage a clear blind spot, but it was a shadowy picture. It scared me a bit, but since it was with my eyes at an irregular angle I got on with getting ready and reasoned that what I could be seeing was the natural blind spot (although I have no idea whether that's the case at all). I haven't been able to reproduce the effect as clearly in good light and I have no blind spots in my ordinary visual field, nor could I notice any on the visual field grid. Nevertheless, the picture is very shadowy if I look at my white desk at such an angle. The irregular angle, of course, causes a bad picture, the nose gets in the way and the angle is right at the extremes of the range of vision, so I guess I'm not surprised to see shadows and the like, but the question that's been plaguing me all day is - that clear blind spot I saw this morning - was it the natural blind spot, was it just a migraine or my tired eyes, or was it something more sinister?
Anyway, about a month ago the final straw came when i noticed a couple of black spots as I was in bed. They went away after I got up and turned the light on and haven't come back since, but I went to the doctors. I described my other general visual concerns, such as visual snow and floaters and things - as well as this incident - and he said he couldn't see anything to worry about, I was probably just experiencing floaters and I guess those mysterious black spots weren't anything to worry about. But he did recommend I book a routine appointment with an optician - just to be on the safe side. I did that, and my optician said that there was nothing wrong with my eyes that he could see and the most likely explanation for the other visual phenomena I've been concerned with were migraines caused by stress. So I went home feeling happy and have largely been able to ignore the odd floater or whatever since.
This morning, though, I woke up at about 09:00 (I'm a student so this is early for me!). The blind was closed, so it wasn't brightly lit, but it wasn't dark, i could see fine. After rousing myself, I sat up and as i turned my head, I noticed a flash of light out of the corner of my eye, against my white pillow. A little worried, I looked to where I thought i'd seen it and slowly turned my head to the left, away from the pillow, which I was looking down at, and towards the wall, so that I was looking at the pillow out of the corner of my eye, with my pupil as perpendicular to my nose as the human eye can manage. As I did this I noticed a clear blind spot, an obvious dark grey spot, clearly showing against the white pillow, like the picture in the wikipedia article on Scotomas. I tried to reproduce the effect and managed, then I tried the other eye and I couldn't quite manage a clear blind spot, but it was a shadowy picture. It scared me a bit, but since it was with my eyes at an irregular angle I got on with getting ready and reasoned that what I could be seeing was the natural blind spot (although I have no idea whether that's the case at all). I haven't been able to reproduce the effect as clearly in good light and I have no blind spots in my ordinary visual field, nor could I notice any on the visual field grid. Nevertheless, the picture is very shadowy if I look at my white desk at such an angle. The irregular angle, of course, causes a bad picture, the nose gets in the way and the angle is right at the extremes of the range of vision, so I guess I'm not surprised to see shadows and the like, but the question that's been plaguing me all day is - that clear blind spot I saw this morning - was it the natural blind spot, was it just a migraine or my tired eyes, or was it something more sinister?