Hi,
All my life I’ve had this weird problem (and my father had the exact same thing, but it was either never diagnosed or I simply don’t know the diagnosis). My tear control seems to sometimes go haywire. There’s two types of events that can happen in one or both eyes, and I’m not sure if it’s the same problem or two different ones:
Event Type #1:
Happens at least once a week. Seems to somehow correlate with lack of sleep or coffee consumption (both go together usually though), but sometimes happens in the wind or when driving with the top down. Suddenly I feel like one or both of my eyes have been ‘drained’ of tears and go dry to the point of affecting my vision. Any eye drops I put in ‘drain’ immediately and leave my eyes dry within a minute or two. Then it suddenly goes away but it is sometimes alleviated if I drink a couple of bottles of water at once, I don’t know if that’s related or not. I’ve considered blaming caffeine or dehydration on this, but sometimes it happens without any caffeine or when i’m really well hydrated.
Event Type #2:
A lot more rare than Event #1, but still happens at least once every couple of months. This happens typically if I sit next to a fan or walk into headwind, but sometimes just randomly. Suddenly one or both eyes will start watering uncontrollably. Much more so than when crying or allergic reactions. No itching, no nothing, it’s just… my face is leaking. Then it just kind of subsides and everything returns to normal.
I talked to two doctors about this. An ENT (yes I know there’s no “eye” in ENT, but it came up) who shrugged and said “Huh, weird” and an allergologist (it also came up in a tangent conversation) who shrugged and said “Hm, probably not an allergy.” Now, I’ve recently gotten new insurance so I’ve been catching up on my health and going to a lot of doctors. As such there’s only a limited amount of work I can miss and the next few weeks are out. I’ve had this all my life and if it hasn’t killed me yet it’s not going to in the next few weeks or months, but before I drag my ass to an opthamologist about this, I’d like to have a rough idea of what this could be.
Note: I am not asking for any sort of a diagnosis. Even doctors don’t give diagnoses in person anymore, and I am going to an opthamologist eventually. What I’m looking for is that, given the information above, what should I read and what terms, conditions, etc. should I look up? i.e. Help me do my homework before I go to the doctor. Just googling only leads me to tear duct blockage in infants and that’s it. I can’t find any other tear system related conditions.
Thank you very much,
Groman