What is the cause of my peculiar vision abnormality?

[mXSCNT]

I have a peculiar vision abnormality. With or without one eye closed (either eye), I see a faint second image, shifted slightly above the normal image. It appears that when a ray of light hits the lens of my eye, it splits into two rays, one ray a fraction of a degree above the other one. This is not a diffuse blurriness as in nearsightedness, nor is it the double vision that you get from the two eyes not being coordinated with each other (because it happens with just one eye open).

I once explained this to an opthalmologist but he offered no explanation. Since it's about optics I thought physics rather than biology. What could cause this?

 

[turbo]

Please go see an ophthalmologist (not an optometrist) to get evaluated. You need a complete evaluation to check for corneal and retinal problems and rule out (or confirm) cataracts.

 

[Danger]

I agree with Turbo; this could be indicative of something serious. Do you remember whether or not one eye began to experience this phenomenon before the other? If it started to happen in both at the same time, I'd suspect a possible neurological problem in your optical cortex.

 

[Integral]

I have a condition called Keratoconus, that means I have conical corneas. In my left eye, before my cornea transplant was seeing multiple images. For example, while driving I would see 5 center lines. Mine was an extreme case and images of my cornea were shown around the world as examples of the condition.

Have your cornea imaged for this condition. It is rare and many drs are not familiar with it.

 

[turbo]

Have your cornea imaged for this condition. It is rare and many drs are not familiar with it.

I have made up MANY power-point slides of diagnostic procedures, examples of deviations, etc, because most optometrists are not trained to deal with this kind of stuff. Ophthalmologists rely on early referrals of odd conditions to save the patients' sight, so our doctors spent a lot of time educating optometrists what to look for. As an optician, I had to build the corrective eye-wear to fix conditions that were not operative. As an IT specialist, I sourced, bought, and outfitted a slide-printer, so that our digital images could be shown in presentations. I'm not a squeamish person, but some of the presentations that I had to put together were pretty gruesome. Rhabdomyosarcoma was a bad one. Get cancer in an eye, have the eye removed surgically, and see if you can out-live the 6-month survival rate... I loved working in health-care, but some stuff was heart-breaking.

 

[flatmaster]

I have a condition called Keratoconus, that means I have conical corneas. In my left eye, before my cornea transplant was seeing multiple images. For example, while driving I would see 5 center lines. Mine was an extreme case and images of my cornea were shown around the world as examples of the condition.

Have your cornea imaged for this condition. It is rare and many drs are not familiar with it.

You DROVE with this condition? This makes me re-think me decision to sell my car and live on the bike.

 

[Integral]

You DROVE with this condition? This makes me re-think me decision to sell my car and live on the bike.

Fortunatly I had better vision in my right eye. That said driving was not fun, and at night down right scary.

 

[f95toli]

You DROVE with this condition? This makes me re-think me decision to sell my car and live on the bike.

I also have keratoconus (it isn't THAT rare) and what happens is essentially that your brain adapts after a while. I wear contact lenses to correct my vision (partly by "flattening out" the bumps, I can't wear glasses ) so that it is reasonably good.
However, I can't (or at least shouldn't) wear my lenses when I e.g. have a cold meaning I sometimes do not wear them for a couple of days; when that happens I initially have "multiple vision" (if I e.g. look at a LED I see more than 10 copies) but after a few hours my brain adapts and ny vision is "only" blurry.

 

[Danger]

Eye problems can be terrifying not only to the sufferer, but also to those around them. The ex-from-hell has a universal-rejector immune system. Normally, corneas don't have to be tissue matched for transplant; hers did. She had 6 of them, and had something called a Multino (sp?) Shunt installed to drain excess intraoccular pressure into her tear ducts. They all were rejected (the corneas, not the shunt), and they finally had to remove her eye. It's just not worth it to avoid the best available professional help.