Could somone (or anyone) please explain how optic neuritis feels? How do you know when you are having an attack?

The first time I had ON, for about a week or so before the blind spots appeared, my left eye hurt everytime I moved the eye. I even had pain in my neck from moving my eye (not sure why I had neck pain)

The night before I got the blind spots, I had the Migraine From Hell. It was the worst headache I'd ever had. Next morning, the migraine was gone, but I still had a little bit of a headache.

and about 2/3rds of the vision in that eye were obscured by a giant blind spot. It still hurt to move the eye.

Went to the ER, they looked at my eye, and diagnosed it as "subjective left eye pain". Which basically means, that I was saying it hurt, but they couldnt tell if anything was wrong. My optic nerve appeared normal at the time.

Went to my regular doctor the next day and he must have recognized what it was. He sent me to an opthalmologist friend of his. The optho said it was optic neuritis, and that it should be better in three weeks. (took 4 months for the blind spot to go away, and about a full year for the eye to get better to a point where I could tell it was getting better)

I didnt realize it till I got to the optho's office, but my color vision was not right. Reds were desaturated (looked like there was gray in the red) and greens and blues looked weird.

I really like the color red now, and green is still my favorite color. It was a really depressing year when my color vision was weird. I'm a crocheter and a sometimes knitter. Yarn didnt look right to me at all. I kept having to ask people what color the yarn was when I was yarn shopping. Didnt do much crochet that year. Did a lot of knitting tho. Learned how to knit about 2 days before the ON hit me. I needed the challenge to keep my mind off the bad vision.

oh, and to tell how you're in an attack. If you have pain on moving your eye, and your vision is disturbed, blind spots, fuzzy, blurry, dimness...go see an opthalmologist or a neuro-opthalmologist and have them check you out. You may need an MRI to confirm the ON.

For me, ON presented as a gradual dimming of my vision.

I started needing more light to read, and found myself holding books closer to my eyes when I read.

Because my vision loss was so gradual, I really thought I was just getting to the point that I finally needed glasses.

I put off going to the opthalmologist for almost 10 months because my husband had been in a bad accident...and going to the eye doctor for glasses just wasn't my priority!

The night before my appt. I realized I had a huge blind spot in my right eye. Large enough that I could lose things in it if I had my left eye closed!

At the dr. office the next day, I found that not only did I have a large blind spot in my right eye, I also had one in my left eye, although not as large.

About six to eight weeks later, I got the "you have MS" speech, and spent the week after Christmas recovering from IVSM.

So while I had eye issues for about 10 months, from the time I went to the dr. till the time I got the diagnosis was relatively very short.

I like the "example" of how our vision appears (click on the pic about 1/2 way down the page) in this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_neuritis

This link is hard to read because of the background, but has reliable information:

http://www.jandoerffel.de/on.htm

Cherie

On that last link, if you press the CTRL + A buttons on your keyboard, it will "highlight" the text and make it easier to read. (You'd think a web site talking about visual problems would have an easier-to-read background!)

Thanks, they are both great articals.

For me it is really blurry and fuzzy sometimes.Sometimes I think I see something that is not there and any reflective light makes my eyes go crazy. I don't drive much anymore because of the reflective light but hope that it clears up like the doctor says it does in most patients. It is really annoying and I have already had IV steroids twice.

I didn't have any pain with the O.N. It started with the feeling that my pupil wasn't expanding when I went outside into the light one morning when I got out of work, I went to sleep thinking it would get better and that I was just tired.

When I woke up that afternoon the whole right eye vision was just a gray mist, no details at all. I called my opthalmologist immediately and he had me in first thing the next morning. I had a bunch of tests and then he sent me for an MRI.

The report was back to his office before I could get there from across the street. He told me I was going back to the hospital for IVSM and I asked what he thought was wrong ( I was sure it was a brain tumor!) and he told me I think you might have MS.

He set up an appt. with a neuro immediately. It was all downhill from there. The ON did finally get better, but it was S-L-O-O-O-W...

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