Dark area in vision- NOT FLOATERS
Posted , 37 users are following.
Hello. I recently went through a relatively traumatic experience in August. I lost a pet that was very special to me and I lost her in a very bad way. After about a week of severe grief and even more crying, I woke up, went to work and noticed that there was this random dark spot in my peripheral field of vision.
This spot is located in the mid to lower left hand corner of vision in my right eye, just inside my vision next to my nose. When I would strain my eyes outward, the spot would grow. When I pull the skin down on my cheekbone, the spot grows larger and looks almost like 5-6 little hills that travel downward in an arc-like fashion. The hills are a thicker black towards the tops of the hills, and fade clearer towards the bottom.
Also, the spot grows more distinctive when my eyes stress upward and to the right. When my eyes are relaxed, I don't notice it unless I'm looking up and at a plain background, or I'm straining my eyes outward. The image I see almost reminds me of paint when you add water to it- where the bulk of color spreads in one direction and the rest clears.
When I am simply looking around the room as normal, I don't seem to notice the black arc, which again, is dimmer and barely noticeable when I am not straining my eyes (though it is still present). The times I do notice it when my eyes are relaxed and acting as normal, is when I am looking both up and to the upper right. During this scenario, the arc looks like a little sliver of a shadow like a crescent moon.
It almost seems as if the spot is dim enough so as I could ignore it in general, but I can't stop thinking about it or testing it. And when I test it, it gets bigger as stated above.
After obsessing about this and testing it frequently, I noticed there is an area in the same place in my left eye- though not as prevalent nor widespread. My left eye seems to house only 2-3 hill-like anomalies when I stress my eyes upward and to the left. It has been about a month and a half and seemed to have gotten a smidge dimmer, but definitely not going away.
Some days I can ignore it, but mostly it's always in the back of my mind and my obsession to test it resurfaces. It scared me enough, that after a week of it not going away, I scheduled an appt. with an ophthalmologist. He did a full check of my eyes: took pictures, did a thorough exam of the front, middle, and back of my eye and determined that there was nothing wrong. He said my vision was perfectly fine.
It isn't fine.
For I also have an issue where - in both my eyes - when I am looking up as far as they can or to the far left/right, there is a a little circle that grows the farther I stress my vision in both eyes that turns a different color. In natural light it looks more greenish, and in dimmer, fake light, it looks more blackish. Yet, the specialist found nothing wrong.
I am at a loss of what to do. I'm planning to go into my regular MD and have a physical done, tell them the story, and then see what they recommend doing.
The stress of this is starting to affect my life in a negative way and I have grown very anxious and panicky about it and other things. I just keep worrying this won't go away or that another strange anomaly will occur and one day my vision is going to be covered in issues and I will have no answers.
Has anyone out there ever experienced something like this before? I can't seem to find any single symptom online that relates to this and I have produced a RIDICULOUS amount of research on it. I have sorted through a glossary of every eye issue in the book- and not one matched the description of what I am seeing.
2 likes, 62 replies
mik10884 barb69591
Edited
I think I figured this out. I'm not sure, I still have to undergo a visual field test but my ophthalmologist is skeptical of finding anything after he did his batch of tests. Pressure, the x-rays, etc. found nothing.
Basically, I have the same thing. Looking at my peripherals, the corners of my eyes, I'd see a dark moon, a crescent, a lens-like distortion. When I strained my eyes towards my nose I'd see a dark circle. Same thing looking up and down. Sometimes I'd see it for a moment and then it would partially fade into a crescent unless I strained again. What it looked like, colors, depended on the background and lighting.
It was like an absence or a shadow or a lens - most often like a circle or part of one.
And when I focused my eyes hard to the sides/peripherals; up, down while moving my head left to right and back again - it was a moving distortion.
It'd stop and fade into the background when I stopped the motion.
Initially, I was panicking that it was a blind spot. Not a new one, but the one we all have and that it might have gotten bigger with age, eye pressure, disease, whatever.
Went to the doc., said he couldn't see any dmg, yada, yada, yada, only ruled things out but didn't offer any explanation as to what I was seeing. I was too hung up on telling him it was a blind spot that I never figured it'd be something else. And how could I? I don't know the terminology. Even finding this name pressure spot online seems a little flaky. It's just the best term that describes it.
Anyway, after browsing around, thinking and experimenting, I think it's not actually a blind spot but this 'pressure spot'. That's what I think this thing is.
When you press down gently on your eye around the edges with your finger you'll see a black spot start to form in a different location in the eye you are pressing down upon. The harder you press, the bigger it gets, the more visible. It can move with your finger. It's a spot you're putting pressure on, hence a "pressure spot." Your compressing the eye, the nerves(the optic?), something when you press down that causes that spot to form.
So I did an experiment. Looked to the side of my nose until I saw my circle appear and then I pressed down gently with my finger on the opposite corner of my eye.(Pressed on the right of my right eye as I looked to left at my nose.) As I pressed down, the dark moon I saw by my nose started to fade while a new black spot formed elsewhere. The original spot would clear up and another would form in a different area. Tried this several times, always the same thing. The initial spot would drain away while another would form somewhere else.
I don't think the eye is the problem per se. It's the muscles around the eye and how your exerting their pressure on the eye, consciously or not.
I've lots of eye strain, I'm a constant eye-rubber and my eyes are twitchy and weak. And with anxiety and stress, it's much worse. The original poster cried her eyes out for days. Maybe the muscles weakened from constant tensing, untensing, etc.
I think it's the pressure our muscles exert on our eyes that makes us see these moons, spots, circles.
I did another experiment where I consciously tried to relax my eyes as much as possible while looking at my peripherals/nose/up-down. I found those spots much reduced, sometimes even gone.
I think due to muscle strain in the eye, weakness, tensing, stress, anxiety, etc. we can see our pressure spots with just the muscles of our eyes, without having to press down upon them with our fingers. Maybe that's why our central vision is fine and its only to the sides we see it? Our eyes resting position is central - while looking to the sides, up and down requires muscle movement and tensing. I mean, you can't fall asleep with your eyes looking to the side, they center back. ( o_0)/
That's my theory of what this all is anyway.
How to fix it? No idea. Not straining your eyes when your stressed or myopic or both isn't exactly easy.
Try to stop testing, straining to find them. I think that was Barb's solution and believe it might well be the only solution. With eye issues like these in times of stress or if you suffer anxiety, people tend to become hyper-vigilant which is not fun and does more harm than help.
Now if I only practiced what I preached...
Anyway, I'll see what the doc. says in a few weeks. I could be wrong. T_T
M
Noey813 mik10884
Posted
sounds like you have what we have. i developed them a decade ago and they're still there. Now I've got new ones near my nose at at the bottom and top of my vision. Weird stuff 😦
amanda48308 mik10884
Posted
thank you so much for this it explains it perfectly I was wondering how did your doctors appointment go that you were having?
gabriel29818 barb69591
Posted
I went to the most specialized doctor in my town. She discovered that I have a scar on the lower back of my retina, and when I look up this little scar changes position, so it looks like it gets bigger.
She also said this is fairly common, and depending on the place where the scar is formed one can never notice it, but most people have it, its natural on the aging process.
you should make a retinal maping, it detects all the area in your inner eye parts.
joshuapryce1987 barb69591
Posted
Get eye drops and look after your eyes and constantly review eyesight and performance with the optician.
bradley96136 barb69591
Posted
I have had this for 6 months and had an eye test and got the all clear. I am 22 and find it very worrying. Additionally when I first wake up, I see dots in my central vision on a white background for 5 minutes until it fades away. It makes me very anxious and I have been referred to a specialist.
nicholas93622 bradley96136
Posted
same nobody will help us, I have it since a year, haven't find out what it is
EMdoc barb69591
Posted
Did anyone on this thread ever receive a formal diagnosis? Sorry to revive an old post, but this is new to me and I am having similar symptoms to the ones mentioned here.