[Laurany152]

Hey, I have a question that has been bothering me. I want to see if anyone else has experienced like a sudden blindness. I mean total not being able to see? This has happend to me twice. I went to the doctor afraid I had a brain tumor but they did an MRI and everything came back normal. I'm not sure what caused it but it did throw me into a severe panic attack. The last time it happened my daughter took me to the hospital which is where I had the MRI done. But then the doctor told me that it was a migraine and tried to give me a pain shot but I was like no I don't want a pain shot. I'm not in pain I just couldn't see. It makes me feel that there is truly somet;hing wrong with my brain. I'm not going to lie, I get obsessed about it even though it hasn't happened for months but I still stay focused on it. Has this happened to anyone else?

 

[ReiTheySay]

I think you should see someone for this. Get a second opinion and do more tests. See a psychiatrist, as well. No matter how scary it feels to do so. Ask your daughter to accompany you for support.

That being said, I'd say it's a positive thing that it hasn't happened in months for sure.

 

[forestx5]

Did you also have an EEG? My MRI was normal, but my EEG showed significant pathology suggestive of a history of epileptic seizure.

Knowing this helped me understand an event that occurred to me at age 17, during my 1st cannabis intoxication. I had an epigastric aura followed

by a temporal lobe seizure, but the cannabis and my inexperience with it confused the issue. I wouldn't understand the event until 40 years later.

Following this trauma at age 17, I had frequent episodes of migraine aura (I assumed they were flashbacks to my cannabis intoxication). They would

start with blind spots in one eye, progress to blind spots in both eyes, and then a shimmering sawtooth wave would appear in my vision and grow larger.

The sawtooth wave would overlay and severely obscure my visual field, but I was not blind in the sense that things went dark. YouTube has some examples of

migraine aura, but my auras were larger and more pronounced. I could barely see around the edges and when you shifted your focus, the wave moved in

front of whatever you were trying to see. Start to finish it was only a half hour, but not knowing what was going on was very stressful. After a half hour or so, the

sawtooth wave would dissolve into general snow and my vision would clear. You should have gotten

an EEG because today medical researchers understand that "Migraine is the borderlands of epilepsy". That is the title of a British Research paper on the subject.

Epilepsy, depression, and dissociation can be related and an EEG can help sort things out.

 

[AnnaGiulia]

If it is related to stress or trauma, or dissociation, the sudden onset of blindness can be in fact conversion disorder. You should definitely get a second opinion on that. Psychological (usually developmental) trauma or unresolvable conflict (that is often related to early attachment patterns) can cause such symptoms later in life. Of course, maybe it is something else. I hope you will find the answer to that. Best, A.