Double Vision?

Brie welcome to our forum. Are you seeing a neuro optomologist? I had double vision as one of my first residuals and it took time for that to really heal …it was about 10 weeks or more. I still am going to my neuro optomologist and they never mentioned the prism glasses. So I can not help you with that part, but as GBS reversed and I worked with therapy doing exercises to make the muscles around the eyes work more effecient that helped. I still have some of the field of vision that is not clear and other problems you have not mentioned. Do they think you had the Miller Fisher Varient along with the GBS? My eyes were frozen wide open during the whole process in the hospital. I know there will be others that post to your message too.

Hi Brie, I don’t know about others but I still have the double/blurry vision problems. Much like you I have the most problems in the a.m. and evening/night when I’m the most fatigued. I use it as a limit barrier, If I limit myself and don’t push beyond those barriers it doesn’t seem to bother me all that much, but when I push beyond my limits it seems to affect my vision really bad. It really is a personal choice, but you may find that in time it will also get better without any special devices that aren’t proven to work. Some people have used eye patches to get the problem corrected-wouldn’t help in my situation at all. I see it (sorry;) ) as a chance to really slow down, especially in reading a book at night-it takes me 4 times longer to read it than it normally would and I get tired 2 times faster. Take care.

I experienced double vision and off for over a year. I could not drive as I never knew when I would have it. Mine was primarily in the morning and during the evening but it happened other times unpredictabley as well. The prism glasses were discussed with me but it would have affected my vision at other times as well when I didn’t have double vision. Since I had “normal” vision most of the time, I declined trying the prisms. Currently I haven’t had it for about 2 months. It sort of went away just as it appeared! I started with CIDP in May 2006 but the double vision didn’t show up till Aug 2006 and left about Dec 2007. I won’t say I didn’t have treatment but nothing specific to my eyes other than just using them! I used steroids, methotrexate, IVIG, and lastly chemo.
The double vision is very distracting and difficult to adjust to. I would just wait and my episodes would go away after about 5 minutes or so. I hope yours improves with time as well.

Ditto re: double vision, I still get it in the mornings and evenings, when I am tired etc. Also extreme light sensitivity – my right pupil does not contract properly (OWWWW!). Also no production of tears, therefore lots of greasy and oily eye drops. I did the eye patch off and on for a month when the double vision was so bad I was sick to my stomach. In the end I chose to force my eyes and brain to figure it out on their own and they eventually did without the aid of appliances for the most part. 🙂

Brie,

I too only started to get double vision (in fact, triple vision) once I started to recover – about 2 to 3 months after I was first hospitalized. It did go away relatively quickly, and did apprear at times when I was tired, early in the morning and in the evening. Thankfully it did not last too long after that.

Hello Brie:

I have CIDP, and it has severely damaged by 6th cranial nerves, thus I have had double vision all day, every day since 2004. It started slowly as a minor nuisance, but late 2005 I had a big flare which caused severe physical disability and an incredible uptick in the level of double vision. A neuro-opthalmologist measured my esotropiea (deviation from fused vision) at 45 dioptres. He called it a crazy level of deviation. Strabismus surgery was not an option due to the risk of another flare reversing the correction, and the deviation was way too severe to correct with prisms.

Finally, about 12 months later the double vision reduced to a 15-20 dioptre deviation that remained stable with essentially no major further recovery expected in the near-term, and I was prescribed prism glasses so that I could finally drive again. I also use hand controls to drive. I only wear the prism glasses when I am driving or when I am a passenger in a car. They are too distorting for regular, all day use. But, for driving they allow me to fuse a single image and since you are focusing on objects further away while driving, the distorting aspects of prisms are manageable. I could not safely drive without them.

If your double vision is deemed stable and “non-recovering” you could have orbital strabismus surgery. Botox injections are another approved therapy. However, if the double vision is not stable, gets worse then improves, or is just healing slowly – then, time is really the only remedy. Patching also does not work for me, as both eyes are crooked, and if I patch one eye, I feel like I’m going to walk crooked and right into the ground.

Bill

Well, this is a topic that is close to home for me. My nureo warned that prism glasses were of no use. My eye Dr. disaggreed strongly. I have double vision to a slight degree at all times, but when I am tired it is worse. The prism in my glasses (I cannot wear contact lenses any longer) seems to help in short distances. Like watching T.V. However, going outside and looking down the street it is distorted and makes my stomach feel unhappy. I have a pair of glasses without prism and a pair with. I switch to fit my needs. The eye Dr said that this is a bad thing to do, but I do not think that he really understands what is going on here. Nothing about us fits any text book he was taught out of. I keep eye patches handy for the times when extra measures are needed to see correctly. I also sleep in a mask because I do not blink correctly and my eyes tend to come open during the night while I am asleep and I get seriously dry eyes.I never knew there was a neuro-optomologost (eye Dr). I would like to hear a lot more on this subject.
Alma
GBS-MFv 1993 and 2004

I still have some double vision when I look up without tilting my head to look up and some when I look down without tilting my head. That makes it bad for going down steps. My periphial vision was very poor but getting better with time. I was not a good canidate for the eye patch and I refused it when they suggested it. My vision would completely go blank from what I learned later was hemoraging in the eye. I do remember the pressure in the eye ball itsself was extremely painful when I would wash my face. I also lost tear production, but that has come back almost completely now. I agree most of this is just time and patience while it heals. But just to make sure I was told by one of my nurses that I could ask the Doctor to invite an eye doctor to come in and to only been seen by a neuro-optomologist so that is what I did and I seen him twice while I was in the hospital and I continue to see him even now but not as frequently. From all is I have learned to be patient but not take chances. Better to be safe than sorry and be examined. Double vision was one of the scareiest things I had to deal with not knowing if my vision would get better or I would go blind. The neuro-optomologist was the one that assured that it would get better slowly. Now the vision I have today is better than what I had before GBS/MFv. I do notice the eyes are first to show fatigue in my case too!