So yes, I did actually go see a doctor this afternoon to see if my blurry-vision incident might be something serious. It wasn’t a TIA or a stroke, because apparently a TIA lasts for 30 minutes or so and includes all the symptoms of a stroke — slurred speech, immobility on one side of the body, and so on. This only lasted a few seconds and was just blurry vision. In fact nobody knows what might have caused that to happen; possibly a small blood clot or just a muscle spasm in my eye.
But I just wanted everyone to know I did get it checked out. Especially virusdoc, whose comment got me to Google “TIA” which then put the fear of God into me and then got me to the ER — where I ended up in room 14, although I was really hoping for room 16 just to make the whole powers-of-2 thing complete.
3 responses so far ↓
virusdoc // 2 May 2008 at 10:17 pm
And I was just logging in to apologize if I had overtly alarmed you! I wasn’t trying to be melodramatic, but generally when you vision center goes offline in both eyes for any period of time, it signifies a Very Bad Event of some ilk. I’m certainly no physician, but stroke has killed my grandfather, grandmother, and very nearly my father. So I pay attention to bizarre neurologic events.
FYI, “small blood clot” and “transient ischemic attack” are essentially synonyms. And your physician was incorrect if he/she indicated a TIA lasts 30 minutes. The average duration is 1 minute and most last less than 5 minutes. And TIA’s can involve only a small subset of general stroke symptoms. Blurred vision in one or both eyes is a leading symptom.
See for yourself:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4781
JackieB // 3 May 2008 at 7:54 am
I’m glad to hear that you went to get this checked out and that everything is okay.
rwp // 6 May 2008 at 1:04 pm
Hmmm. I sometimes have these episodes where my eyes go unfocused, but that’s not blurry (it is, however, annoying). I used to go numb on one side infrequently, but that hasn’t happened in well over a year.
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