Black dot in the eye

[Ninah]

I went to see an opthamologist a few months ago after I had been having dull pain in the top of my left eyelid for a month. Next to that, I had been seeing a black small dot in my right eye, 1-2mm, that was always in the same place. In the middle of my vision with a halo around it.

I don't know all the things my opthamologist did, but she did put those drops that make your iris big and then she measured the pressure in my eye. (tonometry) Apparently everything was normal, because she didn't mention anything.
The black dot I had been seeing wasn't a small 'hole', wich I had been thinking it would be, but she thought it was a floater, because she did tell me she could see some of them in my eyes.

Now I still have dull pain in the top of my left eyelid when I touch it. (it's been there now for...3-4months?) She told me it could be some nerve in my eye that is swollen, or be caused by some muscle in the neck that can affect the eye with pain. So basicly she had no idea what it was. It was all a guess. The same thing with the dot. She thought it was a floater.

The thing with the dot is, that untill I went to see my opthamologist, it had percisted in my eye for 2 months. I cannot see the dot all the time, because when Im looking somewhere, it shows up but quickly disappears. (So it can't be a blind spot, right? Because a blind spot wouldn't disappear?)
Sometimes when I would make a small hole in a paper and would look through it,
I would see 2-4 black dots in the middle of my vision in my right eye (next to the main-one I could see without the paper), but not without looking through the hole in the paper. Does anyone know why? (I found out about making a dot in to a paper to find out if your eye has a Refractive problem. Wich I do, but it's not bad enough for me to get glasses, even though I still can't even read texts that are more than 5-10meters away from me)

Im worried about the dot especially, because now a similar dot has appeared in my left eye, wich is exactly the same with the one I've had in my right eye.
Could it seriously be a floater? I know what floaters are, because I have them myself and they move when I stop my eyes from looking around...But this one is allways in the middle of my vision and doesn't move. It just slowly disappears.

Any help would be appreciated!

[Ninah]

With both eyes I would just get a halo around the square that then formed in to a white square, because of the dot I was looking at. If I did look to some other part of the grid, the grid did seem like it was moving a little bit...
(this is the pic I used)
http://www.positiiviset.fi/kasikirja/kuvat/amsler.gif

But no dot or anything like that appeared while looking at the grid. I guess that's good.:) Im thinking about going to a neurologist, to see if it's really stress causing me these eye-symptoms too.

I just wished I knew if the dot was really a floater or not...

(btw, now afterwards my eyes got really tired from that test.....)

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

Use a Google search of "Amsler Grid" about how to take the test and what it tests. Print off a grid and test yourself to see if the dot shows up on the grid. If it does and is always there and in always the same place I would try and see a retinal specialist for a more thorough eval of the macula. You may need a macula OCT.

The pain you describe doesn't seem typical of common eye problems. If it gets worse or new symptoms appear you might see a neurologist.

JCH III MD