My mother, now 97 years old, has treated glaucoma for many years,
including medicines and laser treatments. Recently there was a serious
decline in visual acuity and correspondingly increase in pressure
necessitating surgery. While for a time there was increased visual
acuity, of late this has declined to be replaced by images not in accord
with reality, e.g. human figures, brick walls, rows of high buildings,
fields of snow. These are most disturbing to her and cause much
disorientation. Her physician has been unable to supply much of an
explanation except to suggest that in her struggle to "see," she
creates these images based upon past experience. She is a sharp
individual, despite her age, so these cannot be attributed to mental
disturbance. I am assuming that the described symptoms are not unique and
there exists some literature and study regarding them. Can you direct to
these and/or offer some explanation for the aberrations.
14
Jan
visual aberrations
"James H. Kellar" <jakel…@indiana.edu> wrote:
>My mother, now 97 years old, has treated glaucoma for many years,
>including medicines and laser treatments. Recently there was a serious
>decline in visual acuity and correspondingly increase in pressure
>necessitating surgery. While for a time there was increased visual
>acuity, of late this has declined to be replaced by images not in accord
>with reality, e.g. human figures, brick walls, rows of high buildings,
>fields of snow. These are most disturbing to her and cause much
>disorientation. Her physician has been unable to supply much of an
>explanation except to suggest that in her struggle to "see," she
>creates these images based upon past experience. She is a sharp
>individual, despite her age, so these cannot be attributed to mental
>disturbance. I am assuming that the described symptoms are not unique and
>there exists some literature and study regarding them. Can you direct to
>these and/or offer some explanation for the aberrations.
I am not in health care and have no experience personally with anyone
having such problems, but your logic opposing "sharp[ness]" and
"mental disturbance" doesn’t seem reasonable. Certain many sharp
people have had neurological (brain) / mental problems. Mental
disturbance being merely a social evaluation of the behavior of a body
controlled by a brain having defined defects or ineffective
organization resultant from sensory input., the more peripheral and
specialized defects receiving less labeling from the mental side of
the coin. Here you describe a condition that appears to be limited to
visual processing in the brain. Obviously, such visions as you
describe will be attributed to the subject’s past experiences by
anyone who is not mystical. You would figure something was not
working right somewhere in the visual cortex, but in the case of
someone 97 years old, I wouldn’t expect you would be able to come up
with some way of correcting the situation that wouldn’t be too life
threatening, but you never know. I suppose the same degenerative
effect (say, an ischemic one) that has, in the past, caused the
glaucoma at the head of optic nerve, may be now acting further down on
this extension of the brain, or else the degeneration at the head
could be causing optic-nerve signals that trigger improper neural
recognition networks in the brain, but I doubt it is directly related.
You could try posting also to:
alt.support.glaucoma
Ray