Chronic headaches & eye pain

[izzy33]

Hi, I'm 29yrs old & have been nearsighted since I was 8 yrs old. About 3 months ago I started having chronic, awful headaches. I am Epileptic w/ partial focal seizures, but after a trip to the ER, a CT scan & an MRI both showed nothing, & I ended up at my eye dr.  At the time I was wearing Acuvue 2 contact lenses, & I realized after a few days of wearing my glasses the pain subsided.  I was diagnosed with Accommodative Insufficiency, which was strange to me, b/c I have never had trouble focusing up close; however, the dr. felt that I still needed the multi-focal lenses & the problem with me focusing was just presenting in a headache.  After a couple of days of wearing lenses with the low ADD I felt much better.  However, 9 days later, my headache/eye pain started to return; also, strangely, now, my headaches were chronic even while wearing my glasses.  I went back to the dr where he increased my lenses to the high ADD, & prescribed me progressive lenses for my glasses, & for 6 weeks I was completely pain-free.  About a week ago the pain has returned; to try to explain, the only time I am not in pain is the 1st thing in the morning for a few minutes, after my eyes have rested all night.  Every minute of every day, I have eye pain/frontal headache/increased pain with eye movement, no matter what - whether I'm wearing my glasses, contacts or neither makes no difference. Also-I don't work at a computer. I again returned to the eye dr... same practice, different dr.  She stated that she thought I have dry eye & do not have A.I. (even though she performed no tests to disprove that diagnosis).  She put me on eye drops & back to my Acuvue 2 lenses... but there has been no difference; I also tried the drops with my multi-focal lenses but the pain is still persistant.  
I'm getting very discouraged by what seems to be a guessing game & only temporary fixes for this chronic pain that is really beginning to affect my life.  Have you ever encountered anything similar to this?  

[Michael J Kutryb, MD]

It means your focusing muscles are weak and you have may have symptoms of eye fatique, blurred vision when looking at small print - in an idividual that is young and would normally be expected to be able to accommodate and see small print up close.  You can look it up on the usual search engines and get a more detailed description than I can give.

MJK MD

[hotcakes22]

What exactly is accomodative insufficiency? I wonder if it is the problem affecting me, seeing as how I continue to suffer headaches even after correcting my minor hyperopia

[Michael J Kutryb, MD]

My first recommendation is to see an EyeMD Ophthalmologist to make sure there is not a real disease process going on.  If not then they can look especially for accommodative insufficiency.  If that is not present then look for dry eye syndrome.  I suspect that your current doctors want to focus in on your contact lenses as the source of all your problems and I'm guessing that it is not that simple.  Seems it never is.  My best suggestion again is to see an EyeMD Ophthalmologist, get a proper pair of glasses, get out of the contacts and have a complete workup for the possible causes of your headaches and eye pain.

MJK MD