4 year old vision loss in the morning

[Scrappy10]

my 4 year old daughter has been waking up not being able to see properly in the morning. It happens for approximately 5 mins after she wakes up and about 3 times a week.
At first it really scared her but now she gets really cross and constantly rubs her eyes trying desperately to focus. She says everything is fuzzy.

I took her to the doctors who told me to get her to an optometrist straight away but he found nothing. The doctor told me it’s a symptom of a brain tumour which has obviously given me many sleepless nights but to go away and monitor her for two weeks and see if other symptoms develope. It’s now two weeks and her vision loss is getteing more frequent first thing but I can’t say she has had any other symptoms to worry about.

We have been refered now to a neurologist but I have another week to wait for this appointment.
Has anyone else ever had or heard of this?
The waiting is now driving me crazy!!!

Hi op, does it happen in a light room or dark? I ask because I get painless migraines. This means I can wake up in the morning and be unable to see, until I get into bright light. No pain associated, just really annoying. I had an MRI which ruled out brain tumours.

Could it be an occular migrane? I've had those and its like seeing colours and dots and you cant see properly. I'd be telling her not to rub her eyes, get up slowly and sit down till its passed.
How worrying for you, I hope its nothing serious.

That’s interesting, it can be either but sometimes ( but certainly not always ) she is incredibly sensitive to the light in the morning, if the curtains are open in the living room she has to hide her face until I close the curtains and get really upset ( this doesn’t always co-inside with her vision being fuzzy)

Yes it’s really worrying :( she does rub her eyes lots when it happens, she used to get really stressed but now seems to except that’s just what happens in the morning. We had an appointment booked for yesterday to see the consultant but they cancelled and put it back another week! 😩

Hopefully your appointment will happen next week.
There's a couple of things that I can think of which may be causing it.

Could you check on your daughter and see if she's sleeping with her eyes partially open? If she is, that will be making the surface of the eye dry and make her vision a little blurry in the morning. You can also get a bit of dryness after having a conjunctivitis infection. Having a fan in the room will make the eyes more dry as well.

The other possibility is some sort of problem with the cornea, which is making it swell at night, making the vision fuzzy and sometimes causing photophobia (light sensitivity).

Either way, it needs to be investigated by an ophthalmologist.

Oh I forgot to mention, can can also ask your daughter to look at a spot of light when her vision is fuzzy. Corneal oedema causes you to get halos/rainbow patterns around lights.

HTH

You poor thing. Why, if he thought it might be a tumour, didn't he get a really fast appointment for you? Why ask you to wait two weeks? I hope the neurologist is able to sort it out and everything's okay.

I get that because of hayfever

Thank you , i have checked and she definitely has her eyes closed while she sleeps.
She hasn’t had conjunctivitis and no fan in the room!
Maybe connected to hay fever but she shows no other symptoms !
She hasn’t mentioned rainbow patterns but did once say she was very scared as there were ghosts in front of her eyes.
I’m not sure why they are making us wait , she said we needed to watch for other symptoms to appear before she could refer her but we are going private and will see the neurological consultant next week .. thank you all for your help

I get this and suffer from very dry eyes. If I don't use my eye drops when I go to bed and if I wake up in the night then I can't see in the morning. I use Viscotears which you can buy over the counter. It's not linked to hayfever or allergies, but is made worse by screen use during the day especially before bed.
When it was really bad the gp prescribed steroid eye drops.

I had this a couple of times as a child. Never had it since. Im 33 and i have no idea what caused it.

@Scrappy10 hi, how is you LO now? I hope you are both well xx