ocular symptoms

Vitor

Member
Hi everyone,
up until last year i had mental fatigue with anxiety and brain fog, that was brought on by a crash that happened like clockwork just before noon,

but last year that crash stopped happening, i have since developed rhinitis and i had for some years dry eye sindrome,

now i have mental fatigue whenever i use a computer or smartphone, not TV or old phones, i went to my eye doctor and he said it was photophobia, but it's weird that it makes me tired,

although without the anxiety or the brain fog, the doctor prescribed me glasses with a blue filter, without them i would get also anxiety and brain fog,

so my question is if this is still CFS/ME but the symptoms have changed?
thanks
 

Not dead yet!

Well-Known Member
Hi everyone,
up until last year i had mental fatigue with anxiety and brain fog, that was brought on by a crash that happened like clockwork just before noon,

but last year that crash stopped happening, i have since developed rhinitis and i had for some years dry eye sindrome,

now i have mental fatigue whenever i use a computer or smartphone, not TV or old phones, i went to my eye doctor and he said it was photophobia, but it's weird that it makes me tired,

although without the anxiety or the brain fog, the doctor prescribed me glasses with a blue filter, without them i would get also anxiety and brain fog,

so my question is if this is still CFS/ME but the symptoms have changed?
thanks


The photophobia sounds a lot like a migraine aura, especially with the anxiety. In my case, when I was having migraines in college, it always was before I was working up to a bout of computer programming (some assignment or something). I always felt particularly nervous about them because although I loved coding, the assignments were for some crazy reason always to code some stupid casino game. I don't know how to play Craps, so asking me to code it is futile. First, I have to learn the game, then maybe I can code it. I enjoyed data structures though, it was always my best class.

I tell you this because it would cause a migraine, the stress of learning a complex game, just so I could code it in the limited time provided (often a few days). That wasn't anxiety so much, as pressure and resentment that this always happens in CS classes in college.

The migraine took a couple of days to start. During that time, I was especially focused and alert (hypervigilant or anxious), and my sensitivity to light would increase until the edges of my vision started to have a strobe effect. Within 48-72 hours a piercing migraine would start in one eye and travel down around my ear to the shoulder and down the arm and leg on that side. Later it developed into a hemiplagic migraine and I wasn't able to speak for 2 hours during the pain.

All of this could be reduced or even avoided by wearing those wrap around sunglasses with amber brown lenses you find in pharmacies as sunglasses that look like goggles. (In the US anyway.) It worked perfectly as long as I instantly put them on and kept them on as soon as I noticed the anxiety.

Some computer people don't wear glasses to look cool, it's survival. ;)

Since then, I've had various explanations of it, not all of them neurological. The aching of recovery has been likened to Fibro by a pain medicine doctor I saw. And doctors have attempted to explain it in terms of virus activity which has no treatment currently (Epstein Barr or Cytomegalovirus).

There is room in ME/CFS to include various explanations at this time. Since we officially don't know, we can't officially define it beyond this: If you rest and do not feel recovered, and it keeps happening, so you never feel recovered anymore, then yes, you have ME/CFS and your particular path to it might be different from mine.

I discovered that

1. I have arthritis and that can cause profound fatigue. -- ditto is the underlined part below..

2. I have Celiac disease and ditto.

3. I am allergic to mold and ditto.

4. I have a very high IGG for EBV and CMV among other hints that viruses are involved, and ditto.

5. I must use a beta blocker to prevent daily migraines and ditto.

Maybe all these are working together? Officially we don't know. I try to manage all of these and the migraines, plus try to eat the best diet I can to keep plenty of vitamins available to me. But still I feel tired. So I suspect there is something more to be discovered.
 

Vitor

Member
hi
i don't have migraines, thats why my optrician was a bit confused with my photophobia diagnosis. i think im going to try those amber glasses though,
thanks for the reply
 

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