extreme light sensitivity

[timmytim7]

hi ppl,

my eyes aren't doing very well :( they are extremely light sensitive and they ache as well.

in day light i have to squint, sometimes it is so bad i have to shut my eyes completely for minutes at a time. i wore shades today, in britain in february... must have looked strange! the shades only helped a little bit. the light of the computer and tv screen also hurts my eyes.

i have only been working half days lately, and i only wear my lenses for half the day as well. i've been sleeping in the afternoon because without my lenses in there is nothing to do. this is very depressing really. i have one lens in now, but i'll only keep it in another hour. so then i have nothing to do again except sleep! i listen to the radio a bit but its not as productive as the things i could be doing.

any ideas? i see my optician on the 28th but i cant really wait that long because it's a very serious problem.


tim

[GarethB]

Up until July last year I could only see the whole day if I wore one lens at a time. Between July and Christmas nwas reliant on one lens and unfortunatly adapted to one lens which I wore so I could get to work and back. While at work and evenings I was partially sighted but thanks to a large monitor I could do about 1/3 my normal work. The othrr 2/3 needs sight to work in a laboratory so I ended up do more paper work for other groups to make up.

What is it you do?

Regarding light sensitivity, that is quite common, I need to wear extremely dark glasses all year round if it is sunny. Normal shades are just not dark enough for me. This is in addition to my tinted contact lenses.

As far as TV and computers go, turn down the brightness and if you have a flat screen monitor, play around with the colour ratios until you find one that is more comfortable. When you are light sensitive, it is surprising what you can still see when things are made darker. If you are like me, no one else can see the writting on my monitor, it is set that dark.

Hope this helps some.

[Andrew MacLean]

Yup, been there.

I took to wearing light excluders. I got them from the RNIB site, and they come graded as to the proportion of ambiant light that they exclude. To get through the day, and oddly enough the evening, I ended up wearing 95% light excluders.

I think it has something to do with the way the KC cornea scatters light onto surfaces within the eye where no light ought to go. hence the pain, the confusion of vision and the resultant light aversion (I can't bring myself to say 'photophobia' ... but, there you are, I have!)

Andrew

[timmytim7]

hi gareth,

thanks for the tips. i'll certainly get some darker shades. the brightness is down low on monitor now as well so ta.

i dont even feel able to walk around or catch the bus without my lenses in, let alone do any work. the monitor would need to be massive for me to see ok! also, even when writing is bigger, it's not clear to read at all.

i'm off to bed now.

c ya,


tim

[Andrew MacLean]

Tim

My monotor allows me not only to increase the size of the font, but also to change the colour composition of text. i find large font size with blue on yellow pretty easy to read.

All the best.

Andrew

[John Smith]

It's often the case that people think that a large monitor = larger characters = easier to read.

Poppycock.

What is really needed is a larger screen AND a higher resolution AND reduced flicker.

The easiest way to achieve this under Windows XP is to change the display resolution to as high as the monitor supports without too much flicker, alter global text size to, say, 180% of normal size (which makes the text back to the old sizes, but using more pixels).
Turn on "smooth edges of outline fonts", and, turn on ClearType if (and only if) you're using an LCD monitor.

[GarethB]

John,

Now I know why you are an IT guy, you have just explaioned clearly everything I have done to my monitor at work which is 19 inch.

Only one program at work it does not work on is where I have to connect to the software that controls my instrumenst on a differnet server. That is the controls are not on my local pc. Here if I change the resolution on my monito so it helps the local programs, the network one is unaffected and have the infor is chopped with no scroll bars.

Keep it all at the resolution as per Johns post and just move the monitor closer so at least I am always sitting comfortably.

Home is a 15 inch which I also move closer if necessary.

[Prue B]

Before my grafts. I used a 15" monitor, I actually found the bigger monitors harder to see. For me it was easier concentrating on a small area than a large one. I got overwhelmed if I had to much to look at.
I find I am very glare sensitive, overcast days and bright sunny days are the worst. Sometimes overcast is worse than sunny. It is not always the light but the reflected glare

[John Smith]

Prue,

I have no issues with you using a smaller display. It does make it more crucial though that you use the highest resolution that is comfortable, so text can stay the same size, but be made up of more dots. The more dots, the smoother the lines are, and the easier they are to read with a KC cornea!

[brigid downing]

thank you for that information John. I have altered my monitor and hope it will help. I usually have to limit my computer time to short bursts of intensive concentration.

As for the light sensitivity i too have to wear sun glasses in winter, and even indoors sometimes. yet other times I use a reading lamp the gestapo would have been proud of. I dont really understand it myself so just know my colleagues are bemused - fortunately i cannot see their frowning faces across the office, but I have heared the occassional comment about a good liar needing to be consistent.

Brigid