‘AGEING’ EYES ACTUALLY A MUSCLE PROBLEM
GEORGIE FOSTER, 39, a journalist, lives with her partner Jaime, 30, in North London. IN JUNE last year, I went to see my optician because I’d noticed a change to my vision. I’d started seeing double when I was tired, especially when looking at the lines on the road, which made me feel unsafe driving. It was also making me feel nauseous. It was hard to see an optician because of lockdown, as they were only doing emergency cases, but I really worried something was wrong. When I eventually got an appointment and explained my symptoms, the optometrist said: ‘Are you a woman of a delicate age?’ I was really offended and told him that I didn’t understand what he meant. he explained that as we get older many of us need reading glasses, because the lenses of the eyes become less flexible and this makes it difficult to focus on close objects. he said this was clearly what was happening to me. I didn’t need reading glasses but I told myself that perhaps he was right and it was because I used a computer too much. So I tried to cut back on my screen usage and take regular breaks at work.
However, the problem still didn’t go away. Coincidentally, I started dating an optometrist a few months later. he had qualified in Spain so wasn’t yet working in the UK, but he told me that I should push for another appointment as he didn’t think my problems were down to age.
I saw another optometrist in January this year, who said I had esophoria — a condition in which the eyes drift outward due a muscular weakness and which has nothing to do with ageing.
It was a wonderful moment to be told I had a specific issue and, most importantly, that it could be treated.
I was referred to an eye clinic and have been prescribed specialist glasses. These have prisms in the lenses which help reverse the outward eye movement, stopping the double vision.
They’ve been a game changer. I don’t get double vision so the nausea has gone, and I don’t get tired when concentrating or feel unsafe driving.
It makes me furious to think that something so significant as sight problems were just put down to age and not immediately investigated. I’m not even 40 yet.
EXPERT VIEWPOINT: Andrew lotery, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Southampton, said: ‘esophoria affects eye coordination. It causes double vision because the eyes aren’t aligned, possibly due to muscle weakness or it could be down to the size and shape of the eye.
‘The condition can be intermittent or may come on only when you are tired or you don’t have the right glasses.
‘To make the diagnosis, you have to do specific tests such as covering and uncovering an eye in a particular way — and not all optometrists are trained in doing these tests.
‘But esophoria is easy to manage with specialist glasses and it’s important not to ignore it. If left untreated, it will lead to persistent and irreversible double vision.’