Hello,
I had a severe bout of optic neuritis almost 11 years ago (I am now 35 years old), but because I wasn't insured back then, I didn't follow through like I should have. I never recovered full vision in my left eye following the optic nerve swelling. I noticed about a year ago that my left eye just drifts on its own when I don't consciously work to focus it (worse when I'm tired). Over the past 10 years I have also had significant problems with chronic pain and occasional numbness and tingling in my extremities, hyper reflexes, as well as weakness on my left side. I do have several herniated discs in my neck, one of which is compressing my spinal cord. I have also had significant pain in my right hip and leg that hasn't been fully explained. I went to see an ophthalmologist about my drifting eye, and he said that my optical nerve was pale but not swollen and the field test shows a large swath of no vision in the bottom left area of my left eye (also, the field test cause my left eye to hurt so badly, just moving my eye felt like a knife stab to my skull, and even a day later it hurts terribly to move my left eye).. I just spoke with the nurse, and they want to use the field test as a baseline in case something happens again, but don't want to follow up with anything else. What I want to know is - should I push for a neurology follow up? I imagine that my chronic pain and ON are unrelated (at least I hope they are), but if I do have the beginnings of MS, then I would rather find out sooner rather than later so that I can get treatment to slow the progression. I just wanted to get some opinions about what I should do - should I get a neuro follow up, or should I just stop worrying? If anyone has any input put for me, I would be extremely appreciative.
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read and respond to my query - this is causing some anxiety for me, so any opinions are extremely valuable.
With kindest regards,
Andrea