Seeing rainbows out of R eye

[Alex K]

Hello good people of the forum!

About 5 times in the past month I have had episodes where the vision on my right side has gotten slightly dim and fairly cloudy. It resolves on its own in 1-3 hours, regardless of intervention. I wear PROSE devices in both eyes for significant keratoconus. It makes no discernable difference whether I leave the device in or take it out. The last two times it happened, I saw rainbows around all artificial light sources. (Such as lightbulbs. Sunlight and camp fire were fine), and the last time it happened there was a lot of pain. Every single time that I had this episodes was either a few minutes after putting the devices in in the morning, or in the afternoon if I take them out to rinse them off and put them back in. I went and saw my eye primary doctor, and the exam was negative (as I knew it would be, I felt fine while I was there). And he diagnosed me with opthalmic migraines. Im an experienced nurse. I researched in the medical journals and books I have available to me and I truly believe it doesn't fit. I asked my doctor why he considers the fact that this happens only right after inserting the device irrelevant and he just scratched his head and said opthalmic migraines have many triggers. I should mention that while this happened, I was on a very long and very active trip, and I did keep the devices in longer than I normally would have. The doctor also felt that was irrelevant.

So my question to all of you is... Has anybody else experienced this cloudy vision or rainbow affect before? If so what caused it? And what made it better? This summer I'm going to be a camp nurse. I'm going to be again wearing my devices far longer than I typically do and I'll work everyday, only 4 days off for the summer. I'm a little worried that it'll happen again, and again I'll be far away from the doctors. Thoughts??


Thanks everyone!!!!

Alex

[LaDiva]

I'd see your eye doctor soon, or maybe a different eye doctor. My friend had something similar, and she had Acute Glaucoma. I think she was in her 50s when it first hit, so perhaps your problem is something else. I am nowhere near being medically savvy, so hope to be wrong. Acute Glaucoma is treatable, and my friend is now fine and has no further problems. It might be that when you visit your eye doctor, the pressure has returned to normal. I have ocular migraines, and have never seen rainbows. They are flashes or zigzags of light and temporarily there are blind spots in one or both eyes. Best wishes to you. If it is Acute Glaucoma, you need to have it treated ASAP.

Acute Glaucoma-
"Most people with glaucoma have "open-angle glaucoma". This type of glaucoma causes no symptoms except for a gradual loss of vision. Acute angle-closure glaucoma is a rare, but severe form of glaucoma.

In this condition the eye pressure becomes extremely high rapidly. This can lead to symptoms of eye pain, redness, tearing, seeing rainbows around lights, blurred or lost vision (black-out), nausea, and vomiting. Treatment to break the attack of glaucoma includes eye drops to lower the pressure, and often oral medication as well. In some cases, IV medication has to be used. A laser surgical procedure can often break the attack and prevent future attacks."

http://www.richmondeye.com/eyehealth_pain/

[Alex K]

Thanks so much for your reply! That sounds exactly like a classic ocular migraine. I was having these pains in my eyes a few months ago that radiated deep into my eyeball and I had referred pain above my eye brows. Last 20-30 minutes and self resolved. They called that ocular migraines without visual disturbances, and now they are calling the cloudiness and rainbows the visual disturbances. He just said there are "many different forms". Most keratoconus patients are able to correct their vision with glasses or special contacts, but without these devices they estimated that my vision was 20/500 corrected to 20/400 (with the devices they are 20/50). It's just fairly atypical. And then to say atypical presentation of ocular migraines. There's nothing else wrong with me, what are the chances I have two atypical problems affecting my eyes?

Thanks for sending the link, I did come across that when I googled- it's what lead me to thinking that maybe it's corneal edema from lens overuse? I looked into glaucoma but ruled it out. But corneal edema causes scarring (which I don't have), however maybe they aren't swollen long enough to cause scarring? Sigh. I just don't know. I tend to be more along the lines of not going to the doctor unless absolutely necessary. My right eye is my dominant eye... If this happened on the L eye, I might not have even noticed it? I was thinking maybe somebody else on here had this affect if they wore their devices too long? I feel like with every other disease it's so easy to research. Whyy is this not cut and dry, like RSV or kidney disease.