Does your visual snow normally contain the "color splotches" versus just the static? I'm wondering if it's an artifact of some kind of vascular or nerve temporary impingement. Otherwise, a truly somatic VS is interesting and I haven't heard of that before.
It was nice to read that your VS faded over time. How long did your VS take to fade to mild and did it correspond to any changes in your tinnitus?
My visual snow came about in what I would call an atypical way to what I usually read. I experimented with using Tergitol to clean my vinyl collection since it's what the Library of Congress uses. Stupidly, I did this in my music studio space at my house where I had sound absorption sheets covering my windows. So it was not well ventilated. I had used an enzyme cleaner prior to this with no issues and when I switched it just didn't click that this chemical obviously needed to be handled differently.
I only cleaned a couple records a night and only used it for a few days, but the fumes irritated my eyes one night and I think I got a little of the chemical in my eyes. I flushed my eyes for a lengthy period of time, immediately threw away the Tergitol and flushed it from my record cleaning machine and cleaning supplies, but the damage was done.
My eyes got severely dried out. They stayed that way for probably 8 months. I was using Refresh Mega-3 preservative free eyedrops like 2-3 full tubes daily to keep my eyes moist. I also used a rice filled face mask twice a day to try and get my Meibomian glands unclogged. I had to stop wearing soft contact lenses as my eyes could no longer tolerate them. I hadn't worn glasses other than at night to go to the bathroom or something in 21 years. My eye doctor put me on antibiotics for awhile due to blepharitis, but while they helped with the blepharitis they dried my eyes out even more for over a month after cessation. I actually ended up doing two courses of the antibiotics at different times during this timeframe.
My visual acuity was quite reduced in general during this time and my night vision was so bad I wasn't able to drive at night period. I couldn't look at screens for long because it would hurt my eyes and the sun really bothered me. So I'd have to wear sunglasses everywhere and computer glasses just to look at my phone even briefly. I began noticing lots of floaters, constant static (mild to low end of moderate, not severe though), negative after images and the color blotches I referenced in my first post. The worst though was that in a pitch black room I literally saw almost no darkness, it was all flashes of light constantly. I'd sleep with the lights on in the room to try and detract from the flashes of constant light I saw when my eyes were closed. I still have flashes when I close my eyes, but they are nowhere near as bad as they were during this time.
I bought a pair of scleral contacts in order to be able to wear contacts again. They also helped with keeping my eyes hydrated. They honestly make the floaters more tolerable as they seem to roll across my field of vision smoother than when I'm wearing glasses.
My night vision isn't great now, but I am almost 40. Still I had no issues with driving whatsoever until this all happened. My eyes can still get pretty dry sometimes, but mostly when I wear glasses because I don't want to deal with the laborious process of putting in my scleral contacts. I don't have any negative after images anymore. I hate my floaters just like everyone else, but since tinnitus, hyperacusis & TTTS they've taken a back seat. If I'm looking at screens now sometimes I'll see blotches here and there, but it's not noticeable otherwise. So I guess it was like a year to get to a better place VSS wise.
did it correspond to any changes in your tinnitus?
Sorry, forgot to address this.
I didn't have tinnitus during most of that time when the VSS was at its worst. Literally, the day I ordered my scleral contacts was the day my tinnitus "turned on"
permanently. I say this because one single night for a period of only a few seconds, probably 6 months prior, my tinnitus "turned on", but I didn't know what was happening. I thought I had an auditory hallucination or something.
I was dealing with my vision issues and during this same time my wife had decided she wanted a divorce. We were still living together, but I was sleeping in the basement in my studio and we only interacted in situations involving our children. I was laying on my futon just miserably depressed and suddenly I heard a loud suctioning sound like a vacuum in my left ear and another strange tone in my right ear. They were both very loud and brief. No building up in volume or anything. Just sudden loud noise and then it stopped. I jumped up off the futon looking around because I didn't know what the hell was happening. When I couldn't figure it out and it didn't reoccur, I eventually disregarded it. Prior to this I had only experienced the mild threshold shift with low ringing type of tinnitus that accompanied going to a concert.
When my tinnitus "turned on" permanently I was driving and it was just sudden in my left ear. It was a loud ringing, but recognizable as tinnitus to me. After about two weeks with constant tinnitus I had an instance where I heard the same tone in one ear and suction noise in the other for a bit. That made me put two and two together and realize what had happened back then was tinnitus.
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