You need to see an Eye MD. I suspect you saw an optometrist (non-MD). Find an Eye MD at www.aao.org or if you saw an Eye MD find a neuro-ophthalmologist near you for a second opinion.
JCH III MD
As posted in another thread:
I've been seeing multi colored grid lines upon waking from sleep for the past several months. The lines usually alternate between red, blue and yellow and can be either very, very dull or very prominent. Yesterday morning they were the most pronounced I've ever seen them while this morning they were almost impossible to see. The lines typically fade away within 5 minutes of waking up.
My eye exams come up clean and so my opthamologist feels its related either to anxiety or depression. The problem is I'm not even remotely depressed and when I see the grids I'm waking from a dead sleep so anxiety seems like an odd fit.
Although none of my physicians agree with my theories I'll offer them up anyway:
1. It's possibly related to sleep depravation or a sleep disorder. I have a wide array of visual problems (dry eyes, flashing lights, halos, flickering, etc) and the severity of these problems varies widely. What I've found is that taking naps during the day (schedule permitting) and forcing myself to sleep longer hours seems to temporarily lessen the symptoms. Conversely my symptoms are most pronounced in the middle of the night when I'm woken up form a dead sleep.
2. There could be an inflammation component. If I experience the symptoms during the day and take an anti-inflammatory medication the symptoms will temporarily diminish. I'm certain that my opthamologist feels this is a psychosomatic reaction but I also suffer from arthritis and my eyes do have a continuous dull aching pain.
Of course you can't simply discount depression or anxiety (the favorite diagnoses of physicians everywhere) as they could play a significant role here. I'm just trying to give you some feedback from my own personal perspective.
I wake up and it looks like I can see my glasses on my face, like the rims, but then shortly after arising this image disappears. I often reach for my glasses thinking I fell asleep with them on. What could cause this?
Thank god I am not the only one!!! I also get laryngeal spasms and only a quarter of the time they are related.....usually its just being woken up from a deep sleep. It lines, or other things.....and sometimes it complete blurriness. Last night I woke up confused and had to crawl out of my room because I could no see right to find my husband. But if I am awoken in a very deep sleep, I wake up confused...but only very seldom.
Also I found this: http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/309/main.htm Central Serous Retinopathy (CSR)
Oh and the term is called metamorphopsia I think.
I have experienced (far too often) this grid pattern, but never in color. Last night was the worst. I woke at 4 AM (trip to the potty) and the grid was VERY pronounced. When I reached for my water on the night stand, my hand made the grid change, like it was moving WITH the movement of my hand, like a blanket laying across onjects would follow a pattern of ups & downs, ins and outs. When I withdrew my hand the grid pattern returned to looking 1 diemensional. I have searched quite a lot today & this is the 1st page I have found about this, yet there seems to be no answers. Any news from anyone?
Linda Anderson
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I have been seeing a grid when awakening in the morning. Goes away in a few minutes. In the last few months this only happened occasionally now is almost daily. Eye dr. not sure what is going on but will see him again next week. Any new info on this?
I have this same thing usually daily upon wakening with my eyes still closed. I also have a host of other neurological and visual ailments. I have a positive IGX laboratory Western Blot Lyme Disease test result for Borrellia, the Lyme bacteria and I'm infusing an IV at home as I write this. If you also have pulsating eyes, floaters, squiggly things in your vision, black spots and periferal flashes or blurbs, consider Lyme and or the many co infections of Lyme such as Babesia Ducani WA1 and Brucella, which I have too (ARUP Labs), which cause numerous physical symptoms. Check out CanadianLyme.Com or canlyme.com for a vast symptom checklist.
I awoke to see a perfect grid pattern, dead straight lines. I have just had cataract surgery. I am wondering whether it was done with a femtosecond laser and I am seeing a projection of the grid pattern it makes to break up the old lens, left behind in the cornea. I had a general anaesthetic, so I'm not sure. Only seen it once, thank God.
Flashes can be due to posterior vitreous detachment in an older eye. I've had that too. Now I'm getting flashes from light escaping from my new lens. It's jumpy and reminds me of aura migraine. Hoping my brain learns to filter it out.
I would be surprised if regular exact grid patterns were the product of nature. Surely they're not a brain construct? Perhaps an after image, but then you'd have recently had to be staring hard at a mesh just prior to seeing the aberration. This is weird. It sent me looking
I have middling to high blood pressure, so it's not due to low, as someone else said.
Not sure where my earlier comments went, but I was saying it can't be natural to see perfect grids. Apparently it can.
Migraine aura can produce grids and checkerboards
Competition between different images received simultaneously can produce a grid pattern, usually diagonal. My eyes are currently mismatched after my cataract removal, so maybe the messages were competing in my visual cortex, producing a kind of interference pattern.
And psychedelic influences, or electrical frequencies firing off at around the rates of natural brain frequencies can cause you to see such things. Not mad, perhaps sleeping near too many Electrical devices? No idea!
This reminds me of Young's slit experiment from physics class. It proves that light is made of waves and not particles.
Light exists simultaneously in both a wave form and a particle form. In 2015 it was photographed as such see this article http://phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html
Yes. I did not word it properly.
And I was dumbing down ;-). but the point is somehow, this sort of disturbance is much more tolerable when you have a realistic explanation for it, at least I hope so :-)
I'm also trying not to keep a log of how bad it is, or when I see it, in an attempt to get used to it, and start ignoring. It took me over a year to get used to varifocals, and on a bad day I'm still unbalanced by them, but it does get better. Last year I could not have born hearing it would take so long!
What you're describing sounds to me like hypnagogic and hypnopompic states of sleep, could that be the case? I've been experiencing this since childhood, although not every night, only rarely.
I've been waking up seeing grids all my life. I recently found out my son is seeing them as well. I never told him about it. I never told anyone about it. But, he described his and they sound exactly like mine. I wake up, I am FULLY awake, but my entire field of view is pitch black with a red or green grid. The lines are straight but curve as I try to move around. Like another person who posted here said, its like the grid moves with you. A few times, the grid lasted so long that the background was no longer pitch black. It lightened to the normal color of the room. The grid appeared like dark grey lines when that happened. But, that more rare. Mostly black background with red or green lines. Its a strange phenomenon. I know that the some of same neurotransmitters that active during the sleep-wake process are some of the same neurotransmitters that activates the retina. Other than that, I am at a complete loss.