Eye problems!? Came on very suddenly. Advice, please!

Hi, everyone. I'm currently experiencing a VERY bad flare-up, and I seem to have a new symptom and am not really sure whether or not it's FM-related or not. It's a tad frightening, and I'm a little concerned. Please help if you can.

I've had an FM diagnosis for around five years, and I'm sixteen. I have some slightly unusual symptoms for an FM patient (I also have Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, or RSD, to anyone who knows what that is, which causes some pretty crazy stuff, and I have a lot of unexplained neuro symptoms that a lot of FM patients do not have, but my doctors have ruled out everything else, so...), and I'm used to being an abnormality by now, but this new symptom is disturbing me.
This morning, when I woke up, I felt very strange. I often have bouts of dizziness and extreme fatigue, but today it seemed to have a correlation with my eyesight, but I don't really know how to describe it. Nothing's blurry, but the vision feels very uneven in both eyes. I feel like I'm seeing two different pictures, like my eyes aren't in sync with one another, and it's rather disconcerting. I do wear contacts, but I've had the same prescription for years, and I have no idea why I would wake up and have my vision dramatically different. It was somewhat-present without my contacts, but as soon as I put them in it was worse (maybe seeing more clearly magnified the difference in sight between my two eyes??). It's not painful, just weird, and I feel like it's actually impairing my balance, which just makes my dizziness that much worse. I've also had a bad headache all day, and it seems like every time I glance around the room or move my head my dizziness gets worse. I feel very nauseated, as though I've been on a ship all day. My meds could cause the dizziness, but as far as I know, they shouldn't affect my eyesight? So my question is- what could this be? Has anyone else ever experienced this, or does anyone know what this is? Do I need to see my doctor? Should I be worried?

I'm currently on Cymbalta (60mg) and a contraceptive (periods make me flare horribly), and that's literally it. I used to be on Celebrex and still plan on being on it, but my stupid insurance is being a jerk right now, and I've been off of it for nearly two weeks now (not the greatest, but as far as I know it doesn't really have withdrawal symptoms, and it ABSOLUTELY should not cause eyesight issues). I can be very scatterbrained with my meds and did miss Cymbalta last night and have on occasion in the past- could that be causing anything? I know Cymbalta's a messy drug to go off of and can cause some funky symptoms, but I haven't been THAT bad...

Any advice and/or information would be INCREDIBLY appreciated, thank you!

I have eye problems too and they are linked to fibro.
I have what is called "snow vision", light sensitivity and something else I don't know the english word.

You know an old TV, and when you open it and there's no channel, there's this grey and white moving dots in millions?
Like a broken TV channel? That's snow vision. But having it is like a thin film of snow over what you're looking at.

Light sensitivity is well, like the every day light is too bright. And the third one, I'll explain since I only know the french word for it.
You know when you look at a light for too long, like the sun for example, and you close your eyes and you still see the print of it?
That, but at random times and without looking at any bright lights. It only last a nano seconds, but it's long enough to notice that it's there.

I was told that eyesight issues are linked to fibro because it's linked to the nerves sensitivity of the eyes.

Hope I make sense.

mamanan said...
Omgosh Anna, I've had snow vision and after images when I first got fibro! You can't imagine how excited I was to read this, I had never heard of anyone else having that either. It started suddenty with many floaters. Then came the after images.... some days I couldn't tell when looking at the horizon if I was seeing clouds or the after images of hills in the distance. I've only had the snow vision a couple times, it was freaky. Then came huge halos with night lights. If a car in front of me had a blinker on, half the car looked to me as if it was in a halo of light. My highbeams gave off airplane landing lights with the guardrails. I went to the doctor, my optometrist and a neurologist who all looked at me as if I was crazy. Thank you for posting this! I feel validated somehow. The after images stayed with me for about 6-8 mths I'm guessing. the halos probably about a year. Now they are back to just normal sized halos and not as intense. Oh, and when I tried to research all this, I came across an article on Wiki that had those symptoms, but linked to LSD damage years later. Now, I was a rebel in my teens, but not to that extent.

She, all that bring said, I agree with Sherrine. You don't want to mess around with your eyes. Or any new symptoms for that matter. Not everything is linked to fibro. Hopefully it just happens to be caused by your flare. We are so overly sensitive, so who knows? But you better get checked out if it concerns you at all.

Awww you have no idea what it means to me.
You're far from crazy.
It's all link to fibro. Also linked to hormones from what I understand.
There's a message board for visual snow:
http://thosewithvisualsnow.yuku.com/

There's some useful information there :)

She,

My first thought when I read your post was Migraine. The fact that things look "off," the headache, and nausea. But you've probably thought of that or discounted it, with all you've been through at your young age.

I sure hope you get some answer. Better yet, may it disappear and never come again!

Debbie

I currently as of the last 2 months, have been having all kinds of problems. From eye pain, to eye pain causing bad migraines. Vision is getting blurry randomly, im having black floaters and also vision gets really hazey and "white" like a fog at times. It's incredibly scary, been to the eye doctors quite a few times this last few months, they cant detect anything. They did a head ct scan of the brain and vessels it was normal. They also checked inside my eyes, my pupils randomly dilate at night and they dont do it of course when im in the doctors office.