New Glasses triggering symptoms

Symptoms 🌡
1

Hi all,

I posted recently about making a full recovery so I am really frustrated to be writing this post but I wanted to share both to get other people’s input and also to highlight a potential trigger to others (I hadn’t even thought new glasses could be a problem, what an idiot!).

So having been absolutely brilliant for many months and back to living a full life I decided to get my glasses prescription updated because I was squinting to read stuff on the TV. My old glasses had a reading boost in the bottom of the lens that helped with close up stuff but my new optician said I didn’t need this as my prescription is for distance and I could see close up fine without glasses.

It took me almost four weeks to notice that I wasn’t feeling quite as consistently good - I started feeling tired and headachy. I had felt that my eyes were working harder particularly when reading but I thought it was just them getting used to the change. Then two weeks ago I noticed that the old feeling I used to get in my head was back and that my eyes were really sore. I went straight back to the opticians who identified that the removal of the reading boost was likely causing me an issue. They have adjusted my glasses and I have been wearing them for the last week. I know they are now the right prescription and I can feel that my eyes aren’t working as hard as they were.

So now I am feeling tired, headachy on and off and my balance occasionally feels very slightly off. I get a weird feeling in my forehead that I have only ever had with this condition. My symptoms are very mild in comparison to what I had before but I am now super-anxious that I am on a slippery slope to a full relapse. I am certainly making myself feel worse by being so anxious but I’m finding it hard to control. Like many of you I am sure, I am deeply scarred by the effect that this illness has had on my life and I am so scared of going back to where I was.

So my plan is to sit tight and wait for my stupid brain get used to my new glasses and then for things to settle - I suspect it will take a while as it took a few weeks to build. I think that’s what a doctor would tell me to do. I might try and speak to my GP and/or my vestibular audiologist to see what they think. That might help my anxiety levels. I have always got better after a setback but this is the first one after a really sustained period of feeling well so I’ve forgotten all my coping mechanisms!

On the upside I know now I need to be really careful when getting glasses! It seems that my eyes are my kryptonite - my initial problem developed after Vestibular Neuritis made me Visually Dependent.

Any relevant advice/thoughts/experiences/encouraging words would be deeply appreciated right now.

Sending you all the very best.

Lindsay

2

Whoops Linds. You didn’t ask the right person.

On this occasion you have described what’s made it worse is the layout change. As the optician said taking out the reading bit at the bottom. Migraine brain and change just don’t mix. Just an ordinary upgrade will make me queer for at least a week since MAV but you have just had the double whammy of increase in magnification and taking out the reading bit simultaneously. The latter obviously put your eye muscles under vast increased workload on topic already changed situation. It should settle in a while.

Be prepared for glazed looks. Theirs not yours. That’s all I ever got from either myself whenever I mentioned eyes in any form whatsoever. But then I even had a neuro-otologist who wouldn’t commit himself on why I was so photophobic.

Btw from all I have read about half the adult sighted population are visually dependent, myself included and the older we get the more so even without developing VN or anything else. A large percentage not them never even get to know it. Provided everything else works OK it’s not much of a problem for them. Bit different for us on here though.

I know I posted about problems when updating prescriptions in my PD. I suppose it just goes to show that however well controlled we may have the condition with medication its still there lurking. It hasn’t gone away. We aren’t ‘recovered’ just ‘controlled’, on the lucky days. Helen

3

I had a brief revisit of short burst of vertigo with my new varifocal glasses. They didn’t precipitate migraines or anything remotely that bad, but eg. kitchen surfaces would give me that vertigo whoosh as I lifted or dropped my gaze onto or off them.

I got used to the glasses, or my condition improved further, because I don’t get this sensation any more.

So may just be the new glasses and you’ll get used to them soon …

4

Just dont forget to rest your eyes every 20 minutes, ensure to blink and maybe wash them with clean water.