Health Issues
Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2017 7:30 am
I'm having a bit of a health problem right now, which resulted in my spending Wednesday night in the hospital, but it turns out to be something that hopefully will be more of an annoyance for a few months than anything else.
About a week and a half ago, I started having what I thought was a sinus headache around my left eye. After a couple of days, the pain went away, but the vision in that eye didn't work that well and I had double vision when both eyes were open. That went away, after a fashion, because the eyelid started swelling and wound up almost completely shut. I looked like a boxer who took one in the eye. Eye drops didn't help, and I thought I had some sort of infection, so I went to an eye doctor at Emory Clinic, which is located right next door to Emory Hospital here in Atlanta.
The ophthalmologist referred me to a neural ophthalmologist in the same office, and it turns out I suffered a cranial nerve ischemia, somewhat similar to a stroke, that only affected the one nerve. The oxygen supply to the nerve was cut off for a while, resulting in damage to the nerve. This is the nerve that controls the eyelid motion and the motion of the eyeball itself and pupil dilation. I can open the eyelid by using the muscles in my eyebrow (different nerve) but the lid doesn't open and shut on its own, and the eye doesn't move in tandem with the right eye. So, I'm literally looking in two different directions with my two eyes, thus the double vision.
Before they made the diagnosis, however, they wanted to rule out a possible aneurysm, so they sent me to the emergency room at the Emory Hospital next door, where they ran both an MRI and a CT scan (when the MRI turned up some suspicious looking images in my chest). Fortunately, those all proved negative, but it was after 1:00 am (after a 9:30am initial appointment) before we got the results back, so we spent the night there. Needless to say, Mrs. SSS was quite frazzled after what we thought would be a quick trip followed by a prescription for some eye drops or ointment. The good news was that we didn't have to pay for overnight parking.
There is no "cure" except time. The nerve should heal, over a period of 3-6 months, but, ironically, the eyelid control will come back before the control of the eyeball itself, so after a month or so, the double vision should return (looks like I'll be wearing an eye patch for a while). In some cases, the nerve never heals, which probably would mean some very expensive glasses to correct my vision.
Getting old ain't fun but it beats the alternative.
About a week and a half ago, I started having what I thought was a sinus headache around my left eye. After a couple of days, the pain went away, but the vision in that eye didn't work that well and I had double vision when both eyes were open. That went away, after a fashion, because the eyelid started swelling and wound up almost completely shut. I looked like a boxer who took one in the eye. Eye drops didn't help, and I thought I had some sort of infection, so I went to an eye doctor at Emory Clinic, which is located right next door to Emory Hospital here in Atlanta.
The ophthalmologist referred me to a neural ophthalmologist in the same office, and it turns out I suffered a cranial nerve ischemia, somewhat similar to a stroke, that only affected the one nerve. The oxygen supply to the nerve was cut off for a while, resulting in damage to the nerve. This is the nerve that controls the eyelid motion and the motion of the eyeball itself and pupil dilation. I can open the eyelid by using the muscles in my eyebrow (different nerve) but the lid doesn't open and shut on its own, and the eye doesn't move in tandem with the right eye. So, I'm literally looking in two different directions with my two eyes, thus the double vision.
Before they made the diagnosis, however, they wanted to rule out a possible aneurysm, so they sent me to the emergency room at the Emory Hospital next door, where they ran both an MRI and a CT scan (when the MRI turned up some suspicious looking images in my chest). Fortunately, those all proved negative, but it was after 1:00 am (after a 9:30am initial appointment) before we got the results back, so we spent the night there. Needless to say, Mrs. SSS was quite frazzled after what we thought would be a quick trip followed by a prescription for some eye drops or ointment. The good news was that we didn't have to pay for overnight parking.
There is no "cure" except time. The nerve should heal, over a period of 3-6 months, but, ironically, the eyelid control will come back before the control of the eyeball itself, so after a month or so, the double vision should return (looks like I'll be wearing an eye patch for a while). In some cases, the nerve never heals, which probably would mean some very expensive glasses to correct my vision.
Getting old ain't fun but it beats the alternative.