I was on pizotifen until last week for almost 4 weeks and it made me completely depressed and full of anxiety. I did not know how to handle it. Visited a Neuro and he has put me on Efexor XR to relieve me from my depression and anxiety. I hope it kicks in soon. I basically suffer from 24/7 dizziness, imbalance, cloudy and heavy head, weakness in arms, rocking whilst walking or standing.
Another condition I suffer from is the visual stuff. I am scared to look at patterns such as checked and straight lines on shirts, funny patterns on rugs/carpets, curtains/blinds, objects at a distances as they all shake/vibrate up and down or left and right. I also notice that whilst reading a book, something on the computer, sign board, the edges of the words bounce up and down or left and right. When I shut my eyes and open them, I notice my vision flickers a number of times before settling down. My eyes don’t flicker, just the vision whilst my eyes are open. This happens almost always when I wake up in the morning or turn the lights on all of a sudden after being in the dark for a long period. When I look at objects and then start to look at something else, a shadow of that object remains in focus and takes about 10 seconds to go away similar to what happens when we all stare at bright lights or the sun. This shadow of that object should not be there in the first place. When I look at the edges of windows, the edges seem to come out. When I look at buildings or files places in a filing cabinet, the files and windows shimmer up and down or left and right. Basically my whole world is shimmering constantly. This happens to both my central vision and peripheral vision and has brought my anxiety levels to the max.
Sometimes it makes me wonder if I have Oscillopsia? What do you think? I am not sure because I am able to read sign boards when I walk or drive which is a common symptom of Oscillopsia.
Can anbody relate to the above symptoms or similar symptoms? How have you managed them? Did any specific med make the above visual crap go away?
HI Nabeel - I experience a lot of these things - partiularly the "wobbly " vision (but eyes arent’ moving) and persistent after images - the latter actually got worse on pizotifen - and it woudl take ages for my eyes to adjust from a bright room to a darker room.
I take metoprolol and it’s really helped with these migraine symptoms (as well as my other ones)
I have oscillopsia, and can relate to everything you have mentioned. My vision flickers up and down slightly all the time (very fast, several times per second). It jumps more each time my heart beats, so my consultant says this is ‘pulsatile oscillopsia’. I must say that I seem to be able to switch off from it most of the time. It’s most noticeable when I look at horizontal lines. I seem to have this all the time now, regardless of whether I am suffering from balance problems or not.
Over time I’ve just got used to it and I feel like I can (mostly) block it out, so it’s not such a big a deal any more. I hope it will be the same for you, or - even better - go away completely once you get onto the right combo of meds.
I have all of those symptoms, plus when something moves (let’s say i move my arm on the side of my vision), i see like a “ghost” of my arm following it, as if the image stayed printed in my eyes or brain for too long. So i kinda see 20 images of my arm , each of them at different stages of the movement. i was quite anxious the first time it happened but i have had that since 2007 now and it comes and goes but doesn’t get worse. Sometimes i have it every day, sometimes not at all for a couple of days. It is mostly there when it is dark (with lights outside, carlights etc.) and when it gets from dark to light or the opposite. It gets better when i take ibupropen, and so does vertigo and headaches so i am guessing it is all related. I had all possible kinds of medical examans and they did not find anything. Osteopathy head and neck treatments also help. The neuro-ophtalmologist said she’s seen a couple of cases like mine (the visual stuff) but they don’t know exactly what causes it and what to do with it. I also feel like i can never focus really well on what i read.