I barely functioned. I hid in my room and tried to obsessively watch a tv show that I'm pretty much still obsessively watching. (BBC Sherlock. The fact that the main actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, has the most beautiful voice to listen to helped.). That show helped a lot with distracting me from being sick from the optic neuritis. It's probably why I still really love it. I'm waiting for the 3rd season to get filmed so I can find out what happened with the cliffhanger from the second season. (weird thing about some British shows...their seasons arent as long as tv shows filmed in America. There's two seasons of BBC Sherlock, but only SIX episodes...seven if you include the pilot episode that never got aired. An episode is an hour and a half long tho. So, they're like a series of movies)

For other things to keep myself occupied, I learned how to make my iPad read out loud to me, and used my Kindle's text-to-speech function to read to me also. I "read" a lot with my Kindle and my iPad.

you asked about when you cough, it makes your eye hurt. Yeah, I experienced that too. I had allergies last year at the same time I had some of the eye pain from the optic neuritis. Every time I sneezed, I went "OWWWWWWWW!!!...that just sucked. I think it's because when you cough or sneeze, you reflexively scrunch your eyes up with a sneeze or cough, which makes you move your eyes. I dont think it's pressure. It's just the fact that your moving your eyes and the optic neuritis is making moving your eyes painful. Just sucks. I hate optic neuritis.