Posted by Simon (213.1.146.201) on February 21, 2001 at 13:17:09:
Basically what happened was that the pupil changed shape, rather than dilating as some do. A separate round bit seemed to grow off the main pupil, so it began to look like a dumb-bell or figure 8 - not quite as big as the main pupil but very weird. (Like a child's drawing of a snowman maybe.) Didn't hurt but it was the only real time I've had a visual distortion as opposed to the usual Horner's stuff. Very, very frightening, as I thought I was going blind.
Funnily enough - it being a Sunday - we rang the on-call doctor, who was a locum, and saw her. She was very puzzled, and being new, rang a friend at the hospital. After about a minute she smiled, went "ahah" and said Cluster Headache. First time I'd heard of it, and that was when I was diagnosed. It seems I'm not the only one to be diagnosed by a locum either - they seem prepared to ask for help from colleagues, unlike a lot of GPs.
The eye returned to normal pretty quickly and I had no lasting effects. Only time I'm aware of it happening, but then I don't spend a lot of time in front of the mirror when a full-blown attack breaks through!
Since then the only other thing I've had that was remotely similar was a burst blood vessel in the back of the eye - technical name "Central Serous Retinopathy". After an attack I found the pupil didn't go back to normal and the eye stayed bloodshot. My vision was very blurry for ages and I still straight lines with kinks in them - can't remember exactly when it was, but around the time of the Hale-Bopp comet (I remember being exceedingly pissed off at not being able to see it clearly).
Had tests etc. after this, but everybody insisted it could not have anything to do with the ch attack - I've always been extremely sceptical about that.
S