Blurred/Darker Vision in One Eye Even After Eye Exam and Stronger Contact Prescription?
April 17th, 2011 | See the Top Answers to this Question Below
I have been worrying the past several days that I am going blind. My right eye has always been worse than my left (I’m nearsighted) and over the past year I have noticed that I needed a stronger prescription. This all started several days ago when I was up for 30 some hours because I was out of my sleeping medicine. A lot of that time I was on the computer because there wasn’t really anything to do all night. By the time I could go to sleep my right eye felt blurry. I took my contacts out and went to sleep. I woke up the next day and everything was fine but kept switching closing eyes like I had the night before because my right eye seemed a little more blurry than usual. By the end of the day my eyes were dry and sore and I began to think I had strained eye or computer vision syndrome. The same thing happened the next day and got worse every minute because I was online looking up symptoms of horrible eye disorders. I noticed everything was kind of darker in my right than my left and there was a little bit of color desaturation in bright light. The next day I made an emergency eye exam with my eye doctor because I was worrying about it so much. He said there wasn’t anything too wrong and found out my eyes had changed a bit since I had last seen him. He changed my left eye from -3.00 to -3.50 and my right eye from -4.75 to -5.50. He didn’t do the "puff" test for glaucoma because his nurse is the one that used the machine but assured me that my symptoms would be worse if it was that.
Since wearing my new lenses the same thing is still kinda going on. I noticed today that with just my right eye everything far away is as clear as with my left eye but close up is blurry. Also driving home from work tonight I had slight double vision with lights until I blinked a few times.
Is this all just because my eye isn’t that great? I’m thinking maybe I’m just noticing things more now and also maybe my eyes have gotten used to the big upgrade in my contacts.
I’m sure no one has read this whole thing but I hope at least someone who can help has.
It was an optometrist and he said they had just gotten a new machine in that week and his "nurse" (or whatever she would be called) had been taking care of the tests that week. He is very competent about everything else.
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Tags: closing eyes, computer vision syndrome, desaturation, double vision, eye disorders, eye doctor, eye exam, glaucoma, left eye, little bit, medicine, nurse, puff, sleep
First, you need to start seeing a new ophthalomogist. Any ophthalmologist who cannot operate a puff tonometer and cannot operate a Goldmann tonometer on a slit lamp (or doesn’t have a slit lamp) should have his license revoked. Either of those devices would measure your intraoccular pressure, and the fact that he could not measure your pressure is a very bad sign for his comptence as a physician.
If this is an optometrist, you need to start seeing an ophthalmologist.
You are likely having migraine prodrome from lack of sleep, which would explain your visual symptoms. Please don’t worry, but find a better doctor to examine you.
With the new prescription in the right eye, if the distance is clear but near is blurry, you may have been over-corrected (i.e. the prescription the optometrist may have been too high). Judging from your symptoms, I think your right eye’s focussing muscle is too tense (in more technical term, accommodating excessively) which may lead to a higher prescription found.
I’m not sure about the right eye being darker and having colour desaturation problems – it maybe migraine – but it doesn’t sound like it matches with any specific eye disorders, so it could be that your right eye is just too tired.
the pressure (intraocular pressure test with the puffer) isn’t paramount in your situation because with slow-progressing glaucoma, you don’t get any visual symptoms, and if it was an acute type of glaucoma, the symptoms would be quite obvious (haloes, mild to moderate pain, mid-dilated pupil) and unlikely in moderate young short-sighted person.
I suggest seeing an optometrist who specialises in Binocular Vision, as they maybe better at finding the ‘true’ prescription of your right eye. Meanwhile, take some rest! that definitely helps