My Lamma Forums

[Geno]

Wow! Where do I sign up for an MRI scan?
A 3D trip round the inside of your own head, awesome!
Glad to hear that LG survived a weird week in hospital and hope that he recovers from his mystery illness. Sounds like a scary experience.

[Lamma-Gung]

Where to sign up?
"3T-MR Imaging", part of The University of HK, just below Queen Mary Hospital.
Need a phone number to make your reservation?

Like my new (hopefully temporary) avatar?

Below is a larger, animated version I just made.
Yes, I'm staring at YOU!

Now where's that 3D rotation of all the blood vessels in my head, looking like an amazing tree....
Ah, here it is, after some editing and conversion to a GIF animation.
To view it rotating again, you'll have to refresh this page.

Fortunately, I can still focus on a computer screen if I just turn my head exactly the right way. But anything beyond that, I've become LG the One-Eyed. Maybe I should start a local fashion trend for fancy pirate eye patches, especially for Halloween?

Maybe Harry's cartoon was almost prophetic with the thick bottle glasses?
If my double vision doesn't go away by itself soon, I might need very thick glasses like that to correct it....

[CY Lo]

Cool~~it looks funny.

[zep]

Let's hope for a spontaneous remission in to the not-too-distant future.

[Lamma-Gung]

While publishing two more Lamma-zine stories today, I couldn't resist to develop the animation above a little bit further into a totally clichéd direction.

Well, it's MY head and I can do whatever I like with these scans I paid for myself, can't I?!

Did you notice that this Terminator also has double vision? It makes him a considerably less effective killing machine...

[nondog]

This kind of thing is sometimes caused by an aneurism (sp??) - a bulge in a blood vessel wall pressing on the nerve that controls the muscle that moves the eye.
Diagnosis used to be by taking an angiogram (special x-ray with radioactive dye delivered to the site by catheter) but I suppose the MRI would do the same thing. You should see something like the way an inner tube bulges out through a hole in a tyre - even forming almost a bubble shape
Treatment is usually high dose steroids with the dose slowly tapering off as the eye returns to normal.
The condition I am familiar with is called Tulosa-Hunt syndrome...

It can also be caused by brain cancer but I think they would have found that.
Good luck! Don't give up

[Lamma-Gung]

Thanks, nondog!

That was very sound and appropriate advice. These were among the many things they checked for in the MRI and many other tests. That's why they did these very detailed MRIs of all the blood vessels, even creating a 3D-rotating animation of the head blood vessels to find any problem.
Nothing major wrong with my head and brain (even though some Lammaites might not agree with that.)
An aneurysm would have caused a very quick onset of the Diplopia, but it developed over about a week very slowly and without any other symptoms.

I have numerous specialist follow-up appointments in Queen Mary over the next several weeks and months, while waiting for the various B vitamins to work and the problem to improve by itself. These completely symptomless 6th Cranial Nerve Palsies often resolve within 2 months to 1 year, if I'm lucky.

Several doctors blamed my former diabetes which resolved itself completely over a year ago after losing the first 100 pounds or so. But it was never serious, symptom-less, lasted for only 8 years and was always well controlled by medication alone. But some (symptomless) nerve damages might have been done back in those years and they might haunt me for the rest of my diabetes-free life. The nerve damages might potentially pop up in future, unexpected, rare, nerve -related health problems, even though I got an almost perfect, clean bill of health now.

The double vision has been improving a little bit already over the last week or so. I get a bit larger, sharp field of vision after getting up in the morning and in the late evening, expanding from a small spot in the upper right field of vision to several degrees, much of the upper right quadrant. Th rest of my vision is just massively doubled, seeing people sharp but double, up to one metre or more apart.

This recent improvement makes a big difference, even though my left eye is still slower in moving around and focusing, tiring easily. So I still walk around outside with either the left or the right eye closed for sharp and normal 2D vision. An eye patch is just too uncomfortable and tiring.

I'll even try to go to Clockenflap tomorrow taking pictures (using the one-eyed viewfinder of my dSLR is no problem) and finally start some indoor gym exercises again, after an entire month of inactivity which left me antsy and tired, eager to get back to exercising.

Thanks again for your advice. The search for the cause and a treatment continues, still relying on school medicine for now before I'll try some "alternative", expensive treatments. Lamma-Por had a 5th Cranial Nerve (Bell's) Palsy a few years ago and she swears that daily acupuncture cured it, even though I still think it just improved by itself over several months.

Anybody out there who's had a similar problem and how did they overcome it (or not), I'd love t hear from you!

[Lamma-Gung]

Many thanks to everybody who's been enquiring about my health in person over these last two months since I got severe double vision, 6th Cranial Nerve Palsy. Just a quick update for those few who might care to hear more about undiagnosed mystery illnesses like this one where modern medicine could offer absolutely no diagnosis, cure, treatment or medication at all.

Well, the problem has improved by itself, taking only prescribed standard vitamin tablets, basically a newly healthy and reasonably fit body healing itself. There's still a long way to go to full recovery, probably several more months. I've still got massive double vision on my entire left and lower field of vision, but much of the right side and part of the center of my vision has gotten so much better now.

I can function OK outdoors now and have even started hiking by myself and exercising again. Being capable of running around all afternoon today and doing 3 photo shoots (Treasure Hunt in Island Bar, Banyan House Kindergarten fair and Open Space Crafts Fair up close to the windturbine), not falling over even once, I have no real reason anymore to complain about my vision. Get over it, you wimp, stop whining and get on with your very happy, healthy life on Lamma!

In the meantime, Queen Mary Hospital has scheduled me for more out-patient tests, even a (free, internal) MRI scan in Feb, but by then I hope to have fully recovered, well before modern medicine maybe might finally figure out what went wrong inside my head, causing this little eye nerve short-circuit.

So I've just replaced my avatar, the cross-eyed Terminator made from my MRI scan, with Harry Harrison's cartoon in the SCMP. It shows somebody he insists is not me but who looks a bit like me, as several people have pointed out.
Actually, it's kind of a mix of past-me, during my pre-Lamma advertising/marketing days when I was actually wearing suspenders and ties and current-me with glasses and a (mildly) receding hairline. Not a flattering cartoon but kind of weird but cute. I like it!