hummingwolf | Sparked by a discussion elsewhere

One of the little visual weirdnesses I've had for years is that I see semi-transparent thingies circulating around in my visual field, often making it difficult for me to focus on whatever it is I'm trying to look at. They're not your typical floaters (which I also get (like everybody else)). Sometimes I think they're kind of neat, in that my hunch--which an ophthalmology student years ago agreed with--was that I was watching blood cells circulating in my eye.

Well, a discussion elsewhere prompted me to look online and see if there's any info on the topic, and I found out that your basic ability to see the dancing of your retinal leukocytes is called Scheerer's phenomenon. This is something we can all see under the right circumstances, but most of you won't be seeing it all the time as I do! As it turns out, there's at least one discussion board devoted to the topic of visual snow. Cool! Now, I wonder if I can find info on my other visual oddities, like the part where the world seems to be expanding and contracting as if it were some giant organism breathing...

Edit: Looks like some of the visual snow board (snowboard!) people share other visual weirdnesses of mine which I tend not to think about too much. Some of them get upset about entirely different things, even when they have the same basic sets of symptoms. One person is upset by visual "graininess" at night, while another person is unbothered by it. Second person is so disturbed by "worms in the sky" that they're a bit agoraphobic. It's interesting.

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Interesting. . . it sounds as though your vision is actually keener than most, and that is why you see this "snow". . .

Hah! Hardly--I can't see the big E on an eye chart without glasses. Heck, without glasses, I may not be able to tell if there are any letters on the chart at all. But with the leukocytes (assuming that's really what they are), it doesn't matter if my glasses are on or off. What really matters is the lighting, which determines whether the little dots are sharp-edged or less well-defined.

like the part where the world seems to be expanding and contracting as if it were some giant organism breathing...

i call that "my twenties", and in some cases i payed good money for it.

At Johns Hopkins' Wilmer eye clinic in the early '90s:

Doctor: Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?

Me: No, go ahead.

Doc: I hope you won't be offended, but we need to cover all the bases here. We don't want to ask, but we feel we have to--

Me: Go on...

Doc: Have you been doing drugs?

Me: If I were you, that would have been the first question I asked.

Things really changed since the early 90s. Now they ask as if it was absolutely no big deal and they all don't react when you start listin'.

I wonder if that is at all linked to the weird colored sparks and blobs in my vision constantly.

Even then, I was surprised that it took so long for any doctor to ask me that question. I mean, I knew that I hadn't taken any drugs that would cause the symptoms, but there was no way for them to know that. And with the whole long list of odd eye things I gave every doctor back in those days, it kinda weirded me out that nobody asked what I thought was the most obvious question.

Could be.

Or maybe you've been looking at my icons too long. :-)

Seriously, with whatever odd muscular, neurological, and chemical things go on in our bodies, it's not surprising that vision would be affected too.

That's a good point.

Sparked by a discussion elsewhere

Interesting!

Re: Interesting!

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