Hello there. I’m gonna try and make a quick preface to this to give context to the situation, also my prescription: OD: -4.25 SPH/CYL -0.25/Axis 005 OS: -4.00 SPH/CYL -1.00 Axis 175

And the preface: have had really extreme health anxiety since the last week of April, scared that I’m gonna die every die and having at least one panic attack a day about it for a month and a half. With the vision problems I’ve now been terrified something is wrong with my brain. At the beginning of April I got new glasses from Zenni (reading through here a bit I know how much you guys love it) and notice it was pretty hard adjustment from my old glasses from there even though everything was the same. A lot of distortion. Also, since these problems I’ve since been to 1 optometrist and 1 ophthalmologist, both saying my eyes/vessels/nerves are healthy aside from both of them noticing they’re dry and the optometrist noticing my meibomian glands were a little clogged. Got new glasses from the optometrist from an actual lab (Oakley’s) that we’re also really hard to adjust to, with same distortion.

Now for the problems. In the middle of my health anxiety I started to notice that I saw rainbow halos around lights, and I had never noticed that before. This was around May 20th. I also noticed I saw more glare than usual. Of course, that freaked me out cause vision problems = brain = death. As I said before, I scheduled an eye exam and everything was fine. Got new glasses, told primary care dr about it, he referred me to an ophthalmologist and said to tell him if I started to get headaches. Then of course, a few days later (also a few days after I got my glasses) I started to have headaches at my forehead. Then a few days later, pain above both eyes (which has since gone away, headaches occur every other day since then) this of course, frightened me even more.

When it was around the time I had to go to the ophthalmologist apt, I noticed now that I had ghosting when my eyes weren’t fully open. Not squinting, just not fully open. Like when you’re tired vs when you’re wide awake. It was mostly with white text on contrasting colors and lights/lit objects/signs. The day of the apt I noticed a weird thing, it went away if I squinted pretty much all the way til my eyes were almost closed, then tilted my head slightly up. It would continue to be normal vision even if my eyes weren’t fully open, until I blinked, then the ghosting would come back. Regretfully, I didn’t fully communicate it well to my Dr at the appointment, she just assumed I meant I had ghosting when I squinted really hard to which she said most everybody will have it if they strain their eyes enough when squinting. Also, the glare got worse with lights specifically at night, it’s light lines of light coming straight to my eyes if I don’t have them open fully.

I’ve done the pinhole test and both glare and ghosting go away. I really don’t know what to make of it, or what it could be. It’s still been freaking me out and been annoying over everything else. I’m going to make another eye exam appointment for this week most likely, so hopefully I can get some sort of news. Just want to know what the hell is going on (and that I’m not gonna die)

Edit: a few things I forgot to include, in this time since I’ve been having these issues my eyes have felt dry/tired and they’ve been more red than normal most days. Also, the ghosting is present with both eyes individually