Double Vision in Each Eye for an Hour

[ilanda]

This morning I had double vision in each eye separately (monocular diplopia in both eyes) for about an hour.The "shadow vision" appeared slightly above the main image, in the same spot for each eye separately. The problem manifested at both near and distant vision, but went away temporarily when I squinted to reappaear as soon as I opened my eyes fully again. I had no other symptoms of any sort.

I'm a 63-year-old male with controlled high blood pressure and live in a VERY remote location during the summer where it is difficult to go to a doctor quickly or easily.

Over the past two weeks I have felt as if I had continued but intermittent eye strain with some occasional pain that felt that eye muscle pain behind each eye. It has mostly felt like minor twinges. I have been in the sun a lot, but mostly with polarized sunglasses.

The other oddity is that for about 4 months, I have occasionally been able to "see" my heartbeat in my eyes, i.e., I sometimes see (barely) pulsing gray spots that do not move but pulse in time to my heartbeat. My cardiologist, optometrist and internist all didn't know what to make of this and suggested I ignore the symptom. The pulse in my eyes does not appear during heavy exercise, but appears fairly regularly when I strain on the toilet or even urinate. It almost seems as if it is related more to moving my head downwards than to the effort itself.

I have two questions. 1. Do any of the symptoms suggest a need for some urgent care? And (2) what should I do next about them if urgent care is not called for.

Thanks for your help.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS]

Your symptoms do cause concern although nothing above is so urgent you need to go to an emergency room. Hopefully you know that an optometrist is not an MD, not a physician and NOT a substitute for seeing an ophthalmoloigst. You can find an Eye MD at www.aao.org or ask your internist or cardiologist to refer you to their favorite ophthalmologist.

JCH MD