Rather Urgent re eye problem - can anyone advise please?

[SalVolatile]

DH has short sight and wears glasses. This week he has started to complain that he cannot focus on a tv or computer screen using both eyes, so he closes one , but now what is happening is that if he looks through either eye separately the image is stable, but then when he tries stereo vision he gets double or fractured sight. After a while this settles down. Does anyone know what this might be please? he is due to fly on holiday skiing on Sunday and I can't get an optician's appointment until Saturday morning. I would really love to know if anyone can put my mind at rest please?

bump?

bump for you.

Im sorry i have no idea - i would be inclined to go to GP and ask for urgent referral to eye infirmary?

New instances of double vision should be investigated as soon as possible as their are various causes and occasionally some are linked to serious health conditions.

He needs an urgent appointment with his optician - ring tomorrow and tell them he needs an emergency appointment as he has just developed double vision.Don't leave it until Saturday.They will investigate and refer him to the hospital eye clinic if necessary.

If they can't see him tomorrow then I would go to the GP tomorrow and ask for an immediate referral to the hospital eye clinic for further investigation.

Depending on where you are in the country eye hospitals have casualty delta. You can just walk in, Moorfields in London for example. Most will talk to you over phone too.

you can phone NHS Direct/24 about this also.

it would be taken seriously.

Thanks - half the problem is getting him to take it seriously

Any ideas at all - ever heard of similar symptoms?

i have no expertese at all.
But i have also developed double visiona nd some vision loss in my peripheral vision recently.
i did a walk in at moorfileds casualty and they ahve been very thorough in dealing with it.

I have a rare problem, but your DH could possibly have a problem if he has been short sighted for a long time and his ear has struggled to accommodate it- sometimes i think the retina folds/gets torn.
Now, as i said i have no understanding of eyes further than this and it couls be something else entirely (mine is something else)

But i went the nest day after this happened to me and I think your DH ought to take it more seriaously.
I think he would be better off finding an eye hosp vs optician... moorfields do an a and e and i've bene there twice!

Good luck- please take it seriosuly.

sorry- i wrote ear for some reason.

You should have a hospital with an eye unit near you that you can attend in an emergency. (Do you live near London then go to Moorfields eye hospital) I would go there given that your dh wants to go skiing. And I would get it checked before he goes skiing as flying may aggravate the condition as being at altitude, especially if there is something like a bleed or something at the back of the eye.
Seriously, get him to get it checked.
(Hi Oops, how are you doing? Have you got another thread I can talk to you on?)

He really needs to be seen urgently - sudden double vision isn't something to be taken lightly.

Make him see someone in the morning - try all your local opticians, and explain his symptoms. When I developed an odd visual problem, they fitted me in straight away to look at my eyes, even though they had no regular slots

there's another thread somwhere- but i might not be around later- off to cook some dinner and then a quiet eve in with dh.
Of fto hosp tomorow am

Good luck Oops. There was something I wanted to say about the headaches but it can wait.

Is it of sudden onset it is an emergency.See NHS page.

He must take it seriously.

Salvolatile - I am assuming this only happens when he has his glasses on? If so I would go to a really good optician first (before trying the hospital route) and get a really thorough eye test. It may also be his glasses are damaged or bent in some way and not lining up properly with his eyes or the lens may be slipping.

Has he got spare glasses? If so, try those spare ones and see if it still happens. I wear glasses and it happened to me once because the arms of my glasses got slightly bent and were actually sitting skewed on my face.

If possible, avoid the sort of high street mass market opticians but go to a really top class one with the right equipment and get DH to explain his problem to them before they do the tests.

Try and ring round to see if your DH could be get into the opticians tomorrow afternoon. Depending on what the optician says then consider hospital.

Disclaimer: Obviously if the condition suddenly gets a lot worse and he is seeing double without his glasses then get to A&E as - double vision can be serious as others say.

As others have said he can go to the hospital eye clinic directly if they operate an emergency walk in policy.

Otherwise he can be referred immediately via his optician or GP or via A&E.

Ah, Betadad, disclaimers don't work on here, you have to give advice and live with the consequences.. (It's a mums world out there...)

what about the headaches?

BigGitDad - sorry I am being a bit of wuss.

I would normally just bark an order at a woman such as the OP and tell her to take her DH to hospital immediately. Barking orders works fine at home usually (not!)

any news?

If you wonder what I meant by casualty delta I meant dept but predictive text on phone changed the word!

News - he has got opthalmic appointment for Saturday.... its not so much double vision as when he focuses on something lit up like a tv or computer creen he needs to use only one eye to focus clearly, then when he goes to binocular vision he seems to get two images overlaying but one of the images is running diagonally and this strange effect takes time to clear each time. That sounds mad, doesn't it!

Apologies for massive hijack. Ooops, I was reading a book recently about a helicopter pilot who uses each eye for a seperate task whilst flying (one to read the instrument panel, the other reads the information on the drop down panel which sits right in front of his other eye) Anyway he said that for the first year most of the pilots suffered severe migraines and headaches until the brain got used to it.
In your case it might be your brain getting used to the signals hence the headaches.
Out of interest he found that he could read two seperate books, one with each eye and understand the information seperately. Which is how he had trained to fly the helicopter.

Sal, what you are describing is in fact double vision. You do not have to see two distinct images for it to be diplopia. It could be just a muscular problem that has gradually gotten worse.

If he has never had any history of these types of binocular focusing problems then imo the sudden onset of diplopia is a matter for a neuro-ophthalmic workup.

So how is he going to ski when he sees double?