Cat -

Based on what I've read people describing ON over the years, there's gonna be a wide range of variation...

Mine was painless. Vision deteriorated over about 72 hours from fuzzy to complete white-out in right eye.

I say painless, but I was experiencing extreme pain in the lower back left side of my neck at the same time. It started 3 weeks before the eye went.

Check this out for timing - they were looking for candidates for the ONTT (optic neuritis treatment trials) at the time (1988). They talked me into being a guinea pig. So I did the 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever day IV steroid thing (I was in the hospital 5 days - I don't know how long the steroids were dripping into me).

Vision came back 90% after 3 months. It's been at 90% for over 20 years now. Still slightly blurry. 90% is subjective. 95% would be accurate too...

Tom