I just read lucille's thread re being vigilant about monitoring diabetes, and decided to pass on a health advisory of my own.

A few months ago I tried to teach my little granddaughter to wink. I closed my right eye and winked, saying "Look at Grandma, can you wink?" She tried, but couldn't quite get it. I said "Let's try the other eye" and closed my left eye to wink. But when I closed my left eye, I discovered the vision in only the top third of my right eye was clear. The bottom two thirds looked extremely blurry, as if I was trying to look through a fogged up shower door.

My recent eye exam had shown nothing wrong with my vision and my prescription had remained the same. So I got in to see my eye doctor, thinking I might have a large cataract forming, or something of that nature. When he examined my eye, he said there was no sign of retinal detachment, glaucoma, cataract, macular degeneration and a litany of other things that can cause loss of vision. However, my optic nerve had been severely affected by what looked to him, like damage from a stroke.

I was shocked, as I hadn't had any symptoms of a stroke at all. Unfortunately, the damage to the optic nerve in my right eye didn't look recent, to him. The good news was that my left eye is doing an amazing job of compensating, so with both eyes open, I see everything clearly. The bad news is the same as the good news. Because my left eye compensated so well, I had no tip off that something was awry. So I missed the window of time to be treated with a de-clotting drug, to attempt to restore the lost vision, just as they do for other stroke symptoms. However, it was recommended that I get a full work up, to make sure my eye stroke wasn't a warning sign of possible stroke risk elsewhere.

I was scheduled soon after for a brain scan, to see if there had been any small bleed, blockage or narrowing in an artery supplying blood down to the optic nerve. It came back normal. So they scheduled a full cardiac work up, to ascertain if there was good blood flow from my heart, up through my carotid arteries, to all the small blood vessels in my head. My heart tests came back good. Then they did a carotid artery scan, in case my heart was clear, but there was a narrowing of plaque in my carotid arteries. That scan also came back clear. As they found no area in my brain, heart or neck with narrowed arteries, they couldn't figure out what caused the reduced blood flow to my eye.

Next, I was sent for a biopsy on an artery in my temple, to see if I had Giant Cell Arteritis. It doesn't cause clogged arteries, but causes inflamed arteries, narrowing the blood flow through them. It often affects the blood vessels of the eyes, and if you have GCA and don't get it treated, you may lose vision in your other eye as well and end up with very little sight. The biopsy came back negative. As a last resort, I was sent for a sleep study, since poor oxygenation while sleeping, can sometimes cause a stroke. The sleep study showed my oxygen levels stayed normal, even with occasional snoring.

My cholesterol, thyroid, blood pressure and blood sugar levels are all good. Full blood work panel was good. I'm not overweight, sedentary, don't get stressed very easily and am not on any medication. The eye specialist, neurologist, cardiologist and respiratory specialist (who examined the sleep study results) could not find what may have caused the stroke in my eye. Apparently my only risk factor was age (65) as eyes strokes are less common in those under 40.

I was told that unfortunately, most eye strokes tend to occur when the person is sleeping, and some people won't notice any problem until they happen to look out of one eye. But that's not something most of us go around doing very often, lol. So I'll just suggest that maybe when you wake up in the morning, (or if you wake up during the night to use the washroom) just wink slowly, once with each eye, to make sure you didn't suffer a significant loss of vison while you slept. If you did, get to an ER. A wink a day might keep vision loss away!