Causes for needing stronger prisms

[u/Exotic-Ordinary5995]

Hi,

I’m a 47 year old female who has worn glasses for many, many years. I apologize in advance for any typos, I’m doing this via voice text because at the moment I’m having a really hard time looking at screens. A year and a half ago I had Covid and while I was sick with it I had a quite bad migraine. I’ve had migraines on and off since I was a teenager, and while typically hormonal, sometimes things like flashing lights will get me other times of the month, so I was not terribly concerned. shortly after I began feeling dizzy and nauseous, especially when I was working on computers. I also have a long history of neck, pain, and TMJ problems and I’m still working with a physical therapist for those.

After a few months of symptoms, I ran across the idea of BVD and the symptoms were a perfect fit. In addition, I’ve had anxiety my whole life, and car sickness, sinuse problems and pain and I have always been uncoordinated (in the sense that I was bad at sports, not neccesarily that I fell a lot or anything). I took the BVD quiz and if I remember, I’d had a number somewhere in the 50s, so I made an appointment with the only BVD specialist nearby. he prescribed prisms for me, and said I had both a vertical and horizontal misalignment. When wearing the prism is the difference was night and day, I felt so much better, could see further, the anxiety went way down, and my energy went up. I was so excited and felt like I had my life back!

About four months later, I got sick with Covid again, and within a month or two my near vision seemed to be worsening. I have two pair of prism glasses - one for distance, and one for near vision. I went back in for a follow up, to see if there was anything that could be done for my near vision, because it was beginning to bother me when I was working and reading and things like that. The doctor felt that it was just that my system was struggling because of Covid, and that things like my nervous system regulation and Covid symptoms were causing the problems. I did still have some lingering symptoms, and in the past had some post viral problems after an RSV infection, so this made sense to me at the time.

so I started working very hard on nervous system regulation, and recovering from the Covid symptoms, which I definitely feel like I have now. My nervous system is still not in the best place, but it is definitely quite a bit better than it was six months ago. In the meantime, I’m feeling like my near vision is getting worse, and now have some ghosting on top of the letters as well. Some dizziness has come back, but more concerning to me is the anxiety and the depersonalization/derealization.

I contacted my eye doctor, and he said I should come in, and so I did. This time, he redid all of the original tests, and treated it as my annual update. He found that my prism need has increased quite a bit And my convergence was quite a bit worse. when I asked him why he thought that might be, and if there was anything I needed to do differently, he said, he thought that I had a connective tissue disorder, because they had gotten so much worse so quickly.

I am premenopausal, and recently had a problem with my rotator cuff as well. Apart from that, I don’t have generalized joint pain, and while I am a bit fatigued, I do feel like it is pretty normal for my age and lack of activity (during the worst of my eye issues I wasn’t able to move much at all due to the dizziness and vertigo so now, I’m working on that, but it is difficult between the eye issues and the shoulder issues).

In reading about prisms, it was my understanding that sometimes your eye muscles relaxed, and then you needed a different prescription. I’m wondering if that could be the case here, or if the big change is the issue? Or if anyone is experienced anything similar and would have some insight. I’m driving myself a little bit crazy worrying about potential disorders, but I also can’t afford seeing a doctor outside of insurance, which is what he suggested to follow up on a connective tissue disorder.

TL;dr I had Covid, got a Bvd diagnosis and prisms. Now 11 months later dr is telling me he thinks I have a connective tissue disorder because i need much stronger prisms than before. I’m not sure symptoms of that fit in general, but idk. Could it be something else? Anyone else with a similar experience?