Wavy Vision

[Fabman]

The other day I experienced a wavy sensation around the perimeter of my right eye. It started just on the outside lower right edge but within 15 minutes it went all around the outside of my eye. I can only describe it as when you look out across a long road in the hot summer or over the hot roof of a car, you see  waves in the air as you look across. That best decribes what I saw around the outside of my vision only in my right eye. No pain or headache was experienced. It lasted about an hour and then just went away.

[Houman Vosoghi, MD]

As always, you should get a comprehensive eye exam to make sure all is OK.  What you are describing sounds a lot like what some of my ocular migraine patients experience.  you don't necessarily need to have a headache to have this.  As long as you have a full exam to rule out other problems.

HV

[karzab]

By the way, if my memory serves me well, I think it might always happen on the left side of my field of vision, so it might be associated with my left eye, and the wavy blind spots might be affecting my right-eye perception indirectly (since the brain puts the images together, you know).  I'm a very heavily left-brained person, if that means anything, and whenever I get a headache (which is rare) it's usually on the left side.  And I don't wear glasses, but have higher photosensitivity than others I know.

[karzab]

I just experienced this too.  Yours is the best description I've found for something I've experience since I was a teenager that lasts 15 minutes to and hour, and sometimes goes a year or two between experiences.

It's really disorienting, because these "wavy" areas are actually blind spots.  I wiggle my finger in them and don't see anything, and they travel/grow/shrink slowly throughout the experience.  Usually the blind spots are crescent-shaped around the left side of the center of my field of vision.

I'm convinced that it's neurological, because the blind spots (which appear to me as wavy colors, like you describe, like heat coming off a surface) are in the same spot regardless of which eye I close, meaning it's not associated with either eye.  No headaches or anything seem to accompany these experiences, and they seem to happen at random.

The blind spots are often at the edge of my field of vision, but not always.  A couple of times I've had one pass across the center of my field of vision, and that was really troubling because I couldn't look directly at anything for a few minutes.

Then after a few minutes, or maybe an hour, it will just go away, and I'll lead a normal life for the next year or two.

I've never used any drug besides advil and caffeine.  Not even alcohol.  I eat a well-rounded diet.  My health numbers are good across the board.  The only anomaly is my cholesterol, which is abnormally low (number ranging from 70-80, while less than 160 is usually seen as very low).  However my HDL-LDL ratio is fantastic, and the doctor has found no sign of tumor or cancer.  Granted, I've never had an MRI.

[Houman Vosoghi, MD]

there are many possibilities here so you need to go see an ophthalmologist/ eye MD for a full exam to make sure all is OK.

HV