Getting a terrible sense of moving or whirling, like hallucination of movement, especially when looking upwards, or when you lay down turning on your right or left side, that lasts for seconds most of the time, is symptom of benign proxysmal positional vertigo.
Feeling dizzy with sense of imbalance or unsteadiness, nausea, general dysequalibrium, anxiety, even tilting, and jumpiness of vision and double vision, are all symptoms of this condition.
One of the causes that can lead to BPPV are recent viral infection and prolonged bed rest, that has probably happened with you while being ill with mononucleosis.

Best wishes!
Marija

Thanks for the reply, my mum was actually diagnosed with this recently, so I've done quite a lot of research into it. At first, I thought I might have suffered from this too.

However, the dizziness on looking up is very specifically when I'm standing up, rather than from the movement of tilting my head back. As far as I know, in my case it's caused by the time the eye muscles take to adjust from relatively close-range vision to a longer distance. And I don't tend to have any symptoms from lying on either side.

But thanks very much for suggesting it, I'd really love to be able to sort some of these problems out.

Hi there. I was recently diagnosed with CI as an adult ( Im 24). I was wondering if you experience dizziness when you change focus. For example when you switch from look at something that is close to to looking at something that is far away. Whenever I do this I feel dizzy and disoriented. Also do you get eye strain easily? I'd love to hear about someone else's experience.

Hi, it's great to hear about someone else's experience, but I'm really sorry to hear that you're suffering from it.

For me, it tends to be mainly when I look upwards, for example looking at a street light closely at the bottom and then moving up it to look at the top. That gives me a lot of dizziness and disortientation. But I do sometimes get it in other ways too, particularly if my eyes are already feeling quite strained. It makes me feel like I want to move my head backwards.

I do get eye strain very easily, if I do too much close work at any time. As long as I haven't completely overdone it, it normally goes away after a few hours, or a night's sleep. If I've really overdone it (for example coursework deadlines or exam revision at university), it can be weeks or even months before my eyes feel less strained again.

How does this compare to your experience? I'd like to hear about it.

Steve.

Hi again. Yes I do get dizziness when I look upward as you described. For instance, if i were to look at the floor and look up at the ceiling that would definitely make me dizzy. The worst dizziness and disorientation for me though is when I change focus. For example, I am looking down at the food I'm eating and then I look up across the table at the person I'm with. That creates a very weird, disorienting sensation and a dizziness. The room doesn't spin, but I feel off balance and disoriented. Have you ever had anything like that?

My eyes strain much faster than they used to. The computer is the worst trigger for me. I also find that when my eyes are very strained from close work they become strained for far activities like watching TV. That is weird because CI is only supposed to affect close work. Have you ever noticed that once your eyes are strained focusing on things in the distance is more uncomfortable?

What treatments have you used? Right now my optomologist told me to do 10 pencil pushups a day and gave me distance glasses for close work. He felt that the distance glasses would force the eye muscles to align better. Have you found any treatments helpful?
Look forward to hearing back,
Dee

Hi Dee.

Okay it deleted what I wrote the first time I tried to send this, so I've tried to rewrite it as best I can.

I have experienced the kind of dizziness you're talking about. In fact, I've experienced it quite a lot in the dining room, but I hadn't attributed it to the change in focus (I just assumed it was the lighting conditions). How are you coping with that? It must be a horrible experience. I know what you mean about the room not spinning, it almost feels like it should, just to justify the way it makes you feel. The main time I suffered these feelings was when I was first diagnosed, and I couldn't stand up for about a month. When you experience the disorientation, does it feel almost like you're disconnected in some way, like an out-of-body experience or something?

As a computer science student, I would agree that using computers is definitely the worst trigger for strained eyes. I find the same problem as you with distance vision once the eyes have been strained, but I believe I know the reason why. Inside the eye, one pair of muscles controls the movement of the eye inwards and outwards depending on the distance that you are looking at. If these muscles are strained, they do not adjust as quickly to different distances of vision. Next time you've done a lot of close work and the distance vision is a problem, try closing your eyes and see if you feel them very slightly pushing on your eyelids. But please remember I'm not an optician, so what I'm saying isn't an exact science.

Recently, I was prescribed glasses which contain a prism in the lenses, which are supposed to pull the eye muscles together (similar to your distance glasses I think). This seems to be working okay for me in that some of the problems have got a bit better. However, it's made other muscles more uncomfortable, so I wait to see how it all turns out. Other than that, I've tried most of the standard exercises but never found anything that made much improvement. A lot of them just left me more uncomfortable. Apparently mine has been quite a serious case though, so hopefully they will work much better for you.

By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how did your CI come about in the first place? Was it just something that developed, or as a result of an illness, or some other way?

Steve.

Hi there. Sorry for the slow reply. I was out of town
for a few days.

The disorientation/dizziness makes me feel like my body is light and I'm not really there even though I'm there. It sometimes feels like my head is being pulled back or waves are passing over my head. It's quite hard to describe.

I was wondering if you've experienced the following: At the end of the day after you've used your eyes alot do you ever find focusing the eye on ANYTHING near or far very uncomfortable? This happens to me a couple of times a week. I just feel like my eyes can't focus on anything for very long. I start blinking and squinting and looking down. It's really annoying.

My diagnosis story is weird. I'm 24 now and I guess I've had very mild symptoms my whole life. For instance, the computer always bothered my eyes, I had trouble with hand-eye coordination, sometimes couldn't keep my place while reading. However, none of it was at all severe. This year the computer at my workplace was extremely bright,and it really bothered my eyes. I also got a blackberry and spent alot of time texting and playing games on it. I noticed that my eyes were strained alot more often from these activities. Still after a night's rest everything was fine.
About six weeks ago I noticed that the strain wasn't improving and it started after only a short time of reading/working on the computer, watching TV etc. The dizziness also began at this time. I went to the optamologist for a full exam. Everything was normal except I was told that I was farsighted and needed reading glasses. I thought this was odd because I wasn't having any trouble seeing clearly up close. Anyhow, I used the glasses for two weeks, but saw only a minimal improvment. I decided to got for a second opinion. This optamologist immediately diagnosed the convergence insufficiency. I should mention that during this time I was only suffering from a mild sinus infection. I don't know if this was related to the problem or brought it out. My eye issues are also made worse by the fact that I have dry, allergic eyes. They often burn, itch and feel irritated on top of everything else.

I'm sorry for the very long response. It's hard to speak with other adults who are suffering from this,so it is great to have the chance to compare symptoms and experiences.
-Dee

Hi there.

I understand the disorientation feeling. I would estimate that I sometimes spend up to an hour a day feeling like that. It's particularly bad when I go to bed at night, but only if it's dark (which is why I'm writing this at 3:27 am). I've found it difficult to describe too, even my optician doesn't understand it. I've only ever met 1 person in the 7 years that I've had this that has actually experienced it. It's just impossible to understand it unless you've been through it. I used to feel like I was totally alone in feeling like that.

I tend to get the feelings of lightness and being there but not there at different times. With the lightness, it often feels like I'm about to lift up off the ground, which makes things like going over bridges (where you're really exposed) very uncomfortable. Have you experienced anything like that?

I have experienced it where the eyes can't seem to focus on anything at all, but that tends to only last for a couple of minutes. It can come on at any time of day, but it's normally after I've done a lot of close work, mainly computer use. For me, that's something that would only happen maybe once a month though. It's often accompanied by a feeling like there's something in my eye, when there isn't. When I get like that I tend to close my eyes instead, and put my hands in front of them. The total darkness relaxes the eyes quite quickly, and can help them recover, at least temporarily.

That's a very interesting story about how you were diagnosed. It sounds like you've managed to diagnose it quite quickly though, so there's definitely cause for optimism. It's great you chose to go for a second opinion, otherwise you'd still be getting worse right now. It's a shame that so few people can actually diagnose CI accurately.

I wouldn't be surprised if the illness did bring it out a bit, the eyes are one of the first areas to weaken if you are fighting off an infection. If you look closely, you should find a pattern emerging that when your eyes feel a bit worse and there's no apparent cause (like more computer usage than normal), around a week later you will have some kind of illness (most likely quite mild). Your eyes should then start to feel better as you get better from the illness.

I'm really sorry to hear that you have those other eye issues to contend with as well, those must make it a lot harder to cope when everything feels bad at once. I hope that doesn't happen too often though.

Did you find that as your eyes became strained, you felt more of a desire to do the things that strain them? For example, I always find that when my eyes start to feel worse I have an overwhelming urge to play racing games on the computer, even though I know that will damage them more. I was wondering if you'd had a similar experience.

And please don't worry about long responses, I feel the same about speaking to someone else who suffers from this.

Steve.

Hi again,

First I am so sorry that you are experiencing these symptoms. I have only been dealing wtith this for six weeks. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through this for seven years! I can only imagine how difficult that must be. Have you ruled out any other causes that could be making the dizziness worse? ( for example, allergies, sinus problems, neurological exam?)

I haven't had the bridge sensation specifically, but I definitely feel as thought my body is very light and might drift away. The thing is that these types of sensations are pretty vague and hard to describe so our experiences might be more similar than we think. Another problem I have is focusing my eyes on people's faces. My eyes tend to jump around alot and I feel very disoriented when I am staring at someone. It is very annoying and distressing.

I know exactly what you mean about straining your eyes more when they are strained. This probably because we are so frustrated by the whole situation that we want to show that we won;t let it affect our lifestyle.

I have a follow up appointment with my optamologist in two weeks so I will see what he says about everything.

-Dee