Monday 7 August 2017

Eyesight changes

Over the years I have had many problems with my eyes, yet the Eye specialists don't seem to recognise what is going on.
Many don't seem to understand neurological illnesses,  like Parkinsons/ Lewy Body Dementia etc, all of which it seems can cause eyesight problems
I never really  understood whether my problems were down to the eyes alone, or whether the brain and eyes were not working together.
As someone said the other day, the brain recieves messages from the eyes etc, so it's down to how the brain uses these messages.
I guess that's why I sometimes look at a road sign, shop sign, something in a book, or on television, and say the wrong place or word.
I wonder if its all down to my brain is telling me the wrong thing. This is very disturbing at times, although I try  to laugh it off,  but it can be serious
In some ways this explains my problems with moving staircases and marble floors etc, because the brain is getting the wrong messages, or is changing the messages it receives.
Things like blurred or double vision can be disturbing, but it seems that they are part of Dementia and Parkinson's etc, including Lewy Body Dementia.
The Eye specialists always seem to do one thing, and that is to fit your glasses with prisms to correct the double vision, because they don't realise that the problem is nuerological, and can be intermittent.
I have had prisms fitted to my glasses before, but had them removed because my problems are intermittent, and after a while I get a pain in the eyes.
Besides which, this glasses with prisms cost a lot more than normal glasses, so it gets very expensive when you have more than one pair of glasses
Yes it's difficult, but I prefer to shut one eye, and then open it later when the problem clears.
Things usually go haywire when I am too close to something or someone, then I see double
I often joke about which "wife" I am going to kiss, knowing full well who it is, but I am seeing double.
However I wonder just how many specialists consider the fact, that we don't always remember things that happened
But people , in a myself can't always remember when something started, or how long it went on for, or stopped, so we cannot always tell a specialist what they need to know
It's no good telling people to write notes, because it's not always possible to remember to do this
So when it comes to eye tests etc, we cannot always describe things as they happen, as well as we are expected to, because of our inability to remember things clearly
In many ways it's a double edged sword, because your brain, eyesight and memory are working against each other
This in turn has an effect on your abilities to plan things out carefully each day,
Even though I have had this on and off for 10 years, I get round it by closing one eye, and this works. Prisms only make matters worse because the double vision is not permanent.
There has been a lot of discussion about eyesight problems in people with dementia, but it appears that the problem is worse than the authorities seem to think.
Our eyes are important to us all, but when things are not recognised on a daily basis in makes life very difficult.

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I always say that we may have this illness, but we are all so different.

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