Could this be the cause of my missing eye nerves?

Hi. I recently found out this I am missing half the nerves in my eyeball. I am only 20 years old. I have a test coming up to find out if I was born with this, or I'm developing Glaucoma. But I just remembered an event that happened a few summers ago...

I was walking around with a friend. Then my eyes got super itchy as they usually do in the summer. I had to go home and put an ice pack on one of them. Every so often I would rub it and the cold ice pack felt good on my eye. Then I took it off then looked in the mirror. To my horror, the white part of my eye was HORRIBLY swollen. The color part was indented inward. It looked as though my eye ball was going to pop. I freaked out and told my mum I might need to go to the hospital. But after about 30 minutes, It went back down. Do you know what caused this? It never happened since or before. Strange. And could this be the cause of me missing half the nerves in my eye? I read somewhere that pressure build on in the eye can cause damage to your nerves. Is this what happened to me? And is this damage permanent? Thanks for any help you can give me!!

[Houman Vosoghi, MD]

You need to see a glaucoma specialist or neuro-ophthalmologist to fully assess your optic nerve.  The incident you describe is most likely allergic in nature and does not explain nerve damage.  You likely need a full work-up given if you had glaucoma at your age, your eye pressure would have been very high.  Could be optic nerve drusen, rare infections, autoimmune problems or in rare cases, brain tumor.  Don't worry about it, just make sure you get referred to a specialist.  It is unlikely to be something really bad because it would have other symptoms etc.

HV