follow up to my eye ?

[marti]

Ok, so a few of us have never had any optic neuritis or MS damage to our eyes.

The second part of my question is about the "weirdness" we might still have with our eyes even though they are free of any ON. I have eye pain, funky stuff in large stores (something with the lights), some other odd visual things that happen from time to time.

Is it safe to assume things like this are caused purely by the MS since there doesn't seem to be any other physical reason for it?

[Lois Shea]

Eyes

I don't have the double vision anymore. What I do have is puffy eyes. They always fee unfortable and I find it impossible to describe how they realy do feel. They are always extremely tired. I don't know if it is from MS.

Lois

[Redwings]

About half of the brain is taken up by nerves that serve some function of the process we call vision. Any problem with the brain that affects those nerves in the visual pathways can affect vision.

The optic nerves are an important part of vision, but they provide only input to the brain. The rest of the visual pathways are part of visual transport and processing. So any problem there can cause "weirdness" in visual perception even if the optic nerves aren't affected.

There are sometimes normally occurring conditions that cause problems in vision that aren't from MS. Those problems sometimes predate MS and aren't noticed until a person develops MS, at which time they're blamed on MS even though MS isn't the cause. Sometimes the problems predate MS, but weren't bad enough to be noticed until MS made them worse. Under those circumstances, it's possible the MS isn't the primary problem. But since so many people don't have eye exams before MS sets in -- and often don't even after -- it becomes difficult or impossible to tell what the exact cause of the visual problem is/was.

But considering that MS can affect visual processing in the brain, it's possible that MS is the cause of the "weirdness" and that ON doesn't have anything to do with it. In the absence of any other medical condition that can cause visual disturbances without a history of ON, it isn't unrealistic to assume the problem is caused by MS.