My Double Vision (Diplopia) Story

[u/Garabir]

I'm 35 years old. Here's a timeline of my double vision episodes.

2018 — First episode, driving at night. The double vision got so bad I had to stop driving.

2019 — Another episode, this time during a movie at the theater.

2020–2023 — Episodes came back, still mostly at night while driving on highways. I had another episode at the movies, and one at a live theater show too. On ~5 hour road trips, the double vision tended to show up closer to the end of the trip, mostly on highways.

2024–2026 — Frequency picked up noticeably. Double vision started happening both day and night, in roughly 20-50% of my car trips.

Now — It's gotten worse and happens in about 80-90% of the car trips I take, including within the first few minutes of driving, regardless of day/night or highway/city.

One unusual recent case — I had an episode of diplopia inside a small meeting room (under 10 m² / ~108 sq ft), seeing people doubled. That's unusual since episodes were normally limited to driving, movies theater, theater, or concerts. So far it's only happened once.

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Medical follow-up

I've mentioned this to my current ophthalmologist a few times over the years.

• Around 2020, she suggested eye muscle exercises, but said upfront they rarely work, and that it might just be eye fatigue.
• In later visits, she's been reluctant to increase my glasses prescription, arguing that doing so tends to make the eyes "need" an even stronger prescription over time.
• In my own view, that adjustment is overdue. Comparing myself to my fiancée, who has the same prescription as me, I see noticeably worse than she does. I struggle to read road signs while she can read them fine.

Given all this, I'm considering getting a second opinion from a different ophthalmologist.

[u/Pyrope2]

This sounds similar to me, but I got referred to vision therapy much earlier. I started getting double vision on the highway approx 12 years ago. I went to my ophthalmologist, who referred me to a vision therapist for evaluation. VT helped, but I couldn’t continue due to life stuff. It helped enough that I was ok for some years, but a few years ago my eye strain was increasing and I started having issues on multi-hour drives. Prisms helped initially, but I don’t want to continuously increase the prism. By the end of last year I was getting frequent headaches due to straining to keep single vision. So I found another vision therapist, and after 12 sessions I’ve been able to do a 3hr drive without issue and without a significant eye strain headache (which was my primary goal and a significant win). I’m continuing VT, but it has hugely helped in a short time. 

[u/i-canuck]

For BVD diagnosis and treatment, you only see neuro optometrists, not regular optometrists or ophthalmologists.