I realize it's not related to back/neck pain, but since you asked: The optic neuropathy (in my left eye) was discovered when I was having a lot of sinus infections and was going through pre-surgery testing for the eventual bilaterial frontal sinus obliteration I had Feb. 2009. My sinus problems were what led me to being diagnosed with a rare Primary Immune Deficiency Disease (genetic based) and are something I've been struggling with for years, in addition to my back/neck pain.

Neuropathy can happen in any part of the body (legs, arms etc.) but this optic neuropathy was a result of my serious sinus problems and recurring infections. I do have neuropathy in my legs and arms so if may just be all part of the picture, I'm not sure. But I know the sinus stuff played a big part in bringing it about. Before the sinus obliteration (they only removed the two sinuses in my forehead), I'd had 8 sinus surgeries. This was what made my ENT suspicious about my overall health, was referred to an immunologist, and was diagnosed with this immune deficiency disease.

I have to give myself an infusion, every morning for 3 hours, of other people's antibodies as my body doesn't make certain antibodies (ie, I can't fight off strep, staph, pneumonia). It's actually taken out of blood donations, so when folks give blood it's going to multiple uses. It's a very expensive disease to have...costs my insurance about $6,000 every month and I'll have to give it to myself for the rest of my life as it substitutes for what my body cannot naturally produce. There's a lot of auto-immune stuff that runs in the female side of my family, unfortunately. My mum died last year and my sister preceded her in death by 6 weeks, so as my husband would say I'm not one gene pool you'd want to swim in

At one point they thought the sinus infection was going to make it into my brain so I got the emergency frontal sinus obliteration to make sure that didn't happen. Was a long, horrible surgery and that post-surgery makes this SCS post-surgery seem like a cake walk (won't go into the details as it's pretty gorey how they do the sinus obliteration.)

As a result of all this, I have to periodically see my optha-neurosurgeon to monitor my left eye and when she did her testing yesterday that was when she discovered my right eye is having problems due to this increased spinal fluid pressure.

The only symptom I'm having is having a hard time focusing with my left eye. I didn't know there was anything wrong with my right eye until the tests yesterday. Still waiting to hear from pain mgmt. dr. and am hoping they don't decide to take the SCS's away from me We'll have a big fight over that one!