Prolonged blurring with eye pressure

[lusciousleaves]

Have you ever been to a PT or massage appointment where you've gotten up from the the face cradle and had an eye take an hour to see right afterward? This happens to me and I'm not sure what it is. Wondering if anyone else experiences it.

I asked the neuro-ophth about it who said it had to do with the retina getting distorted, said my eyes were pressure sensitive and to be careful about that. I gather it's not a good thing to have happen.

[Redwings]

This could be a case where your neuro-ophth is thinking more like a neuro and less like and ophthalmologist. I'm going to propose a different mechanism that has a more logical explanation.

The retina is like Saran Wrap that's pressed up against the back of the eye. It doesn't really have much way to distort without the white part of the eye that supports it also distorting. And the white part is fairly tough, so it takes a bit of pressure to do that. And when it distorts, it recovers quickly. And the retina follows it.

The cornea, on the other hand, is moldable. It has some body and substance to it. It takes sustained pressure to distort (maybe lasting a half-hour or more), and it also recovers slowly (taking about the same amount of time). The cornea is so moldable that that characteristic allows it to be intentionally or unintentionally reshaped with contact lenses (google orthokeratology).

Some people's corneas distort so easily that just the pressure of the eyelids can warp them during prolonged reading. And it isn't unheard of for someone to sleep with a pillow or hand/arm pressing on one eye and wake up with a distorted cornea that blurs their vision for a couple of hours in the morning after they wake up. The vision clears up as the cornea returns to its normal shape.

The upper eyelids have a plate of dense connective tissue in them. It's possible that, after you've been lying face down for a half hour or hour, the downward pressure of your eyeballs against the firm tissue in your eyelids has been enough to temporarily flatten your corneas a bit. And then after another hour they return to their normal curvature.

That doesn't mean that there might not also be something retinal going on. But retinas don't distort or mold the way corneas do, and in a simple face-down position, there's nothing for the retinas to distort against. So a retinal explanation more logically would involve a process different than being distorted by pressure. The corneas being flattened against the eyelid plates is, anatomically and physiologically, a more logical explanation. So that's what leads me to believe that your neuro-ophth has been doing neuro so long that he may have forgotten about a corneal explanation.

[lusciousleaves]

Excellent explanation. Glad to hear it's likely not something more sinister. It makes complete sense now.

[artteacher]

Thanks for you answer Redwings

Redwings
Your explanation has helped me understand what might be going on with my vision. I have problems with blurring vision and mono-occular double vision after reading for more than an hour (esp. if on computer or ipad). I know that I squint when I read and I had been feeling like my eyelid droops when in read. It clears about an hour later. I don't think it is MS related. I think I have a connective tissue problem throughout my body. (I will be seeing an rheumy soon for this). I will be seeing my opthamologist in July.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge about vision!