How to describe something to doctors....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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To get the standard disclaimers out of the way, I am in no way seeking medical advice on this board. I am under multiple doctors’ care for this weirdness.

Problem is, I can’t describe the weirdness in any way that seems adequate.

Something is going kerflooey with my vision. Or maybe my head. Or maybe my ears… I’ve now had bloodwork, a CT scan, eye tests, and next I see a neurologist.

At first I was sure it was something with my inner ear, as I felt I was having dizzy spells when I was moving around. My doctor put me on antihistimines, figuring it was a virus that was wreaking havoc on my inner ears. That made it much worse, but I tried for three days.

With the passage of time, though, I have narrowed a few things down - the problems don’t happen when I move my head, just my eyes. It is worse when I look to the left while I am moving than any other time. It is worse in dim light than bright. I’m best in the first hour or so of the day.

But it isn’t really dizziness. I’ve had problems with motion sickness my whole life - this is not making me at all nauseated. It is more like… you know how some patterns make your eyes jump or twitch when you look at them? Really funky optical illusions/spirally things and horrible colors (Do all Home Depots have truly scary bathroom stalls?) can make your eyes sort of “bug out” for a second.

Does anybody know what I am talking about? Because my eyes feel like that for a split second every time I look to the side. By the end of the day, I am exhausted and don’t trust myself to drive.

(By the way, so far all tests have come back perfectly normal, except that I have extremely dry eyes. I’ll be tackling that as soon as my pupils get back down to the same size - the eye doctor was this afternoon.)

But how do you figure out how to describe a sensation that you don’t think other people have had??? At least when I started having optical migraines I had words for it… so I didn’t think I was going nutso.

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I used to have that. I agree it is hard to describe but you did a good job of it. It’s like one of those scenes you sometimes see in a movie where the movement is herky-jerky but your brain thinks it can feel that movement. I would also get sudden attacks that felt like I’d lost my balance and was starting to fall over. My doctor said these sensations were vertigo and did a blood test to see what my thyroid was doing. Turned out I had hypothyroidism, which means it wasn’t producing as much hormones as it should. It’s a pretty common problem in a lot of people, though some, like my sister, don’t experience vertigo. My doctor prescribed Synthroid for me. That made those strange feelings go away but if I forgot or ran out of pills that effect came back with a vengeance in the next day or two.

However, I haven’t taken Synthroid in a few years now and recent tests show I no longer have hypothyroidism. I think usually you have it for life. Anyway, since I’ve been off, I’ve only had two attacks of the falling over variety and none of the herky-jerky variety

I hope what you have is as easily remedied. Good luck to you.

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Thanks, Tikki - “Herky Jerky” comes close. Already tested the Thyroid - it is fine.