Anyone have any experience with this? My 6yo has been complaining of seeing "light bugs". She says that she sees them all of the time, but they are more bothersome at night. They are coming at her. We have been to the pediatrician and the Optometrist today. There is nothing of a physical nature that he can find wrong with her eyes. I am waiting for her pediatrician to call back to discuss this. She does have seasonal allergies and I know some of the meds can cause some of these problems, but this has been a good year for her and she has hardly had to take anything and nothing in about a month. What next?
Thank you everyone for your input! You have given me more input than anyone else. We went to the Optometrist because that is where our pediatrician said to start - with the Optometrist she went to for her school exam the year before. He did not see any floaters. The pediatrician seems to be washing her hands of this. She didn't even call me back, but the nurse did just this morning after my second call. Saying that since she went to a specialist there was nothing else. Now I need to find a pediatric ophthalmologist and a new pediatrician or family doctor.
My daughter has had that problem and she was dehydrated. She is very active and plays a lot of sports along with living in a desert. We stay on her to drink a full water bottle and then some and we have not had that problem again.
Sounds like floaters. They can be affected by a lot of things, including allergies and hydration (and sometimes those affect each other), with or without the meds. There is some great children's nutritional info that helps with high absorption of nutrients that has a pretty high success rate to remedy a lot of these problems, not only the floaters but also the allergies. Happy to give you more info if you want to take another approach than just medical appointments. Generally, these floaters are not serious but they can be distracting, which can interfere with learning and even focus for things like crossing the street.
- Visual migraines. Pain free, typically, but they cause light ripples, halos, or spots to dance about as the optic nerve wigs out.
- "floaters"
- blood pressure shift (seeing stars)
- sun spots / afterburn (ESP in summer, a lot of kids stare at the sun or reflection off water/metal/etc). These burned images can last for hours.
- pixilation. Both in light, or in dark, they eye is creating extra images for the brain to look at / amuse itself with.
- dehydration / heat exhaustion causes change in vision that can manifest as dark or light spots in some people
- as well as rarer (the above are all super common) eye disorders (macular degeneration, for example).
All equal.... She's probably just fine,.. But I'd go ahead and schedule a pediatric ophthalmologist visit to be on the safe side. NOT an optometrist, but an ophthalmologist.
What's next is a pediatric neurologist. That's what I would do.
You might ask to be referred to a neurologist... Just a thought, or a neuro-opthalmologist. Or at least an Ophthalmologist. An optometrist is strictly for vision, not really the inner workings of the eye. Optometrists are not MDs like the others I mentioned. Not that that wasn't a good starting place.
I was getting migraines at that age. I didn't have the "aura" til a few years later, but it can look a lot like that (flashing lights, sparkling lights, coming at you). I often get the aura only with no headache. For me it is a small crescent of sparkly lights that gets sparklier and bigger over about 15 minutes period... Sort of like it's "coming at me").
Good luck, I'm sure you'll get it figured out.
does she have a headache when she is seeing them? migrains can cause this type of thing
I call them flashers and have only gotten them when I was pregnant, usually if I suddenly stood up, sort of like when your blood pressure suddenly drops and you get dizzy.
My (step) daughter also gets these as well. She's 15 and mentioned them a few years ago and said that she has always had them. We of course had her eyes checked but they weren't the problem. There seems to be no pattern for her. They're just mildly annoying for a few seconds and then they go away. Her pediatrician said that they're most likely an ocular migraine, which is migraine activity with a visual component that may or may not be followed by a headache. It's basically a weird and probably harmless neurological quirk.
The first thing I thought of were floaters. I would mention that to the optometrist and see what they say.
I have floaters that could be called light bugs. It's odd if hers actual are lit up though. This is often from being too tired, having dry eyes, etc....I hope it's something this simple and not an illness she's having.
Keep up updated!
It sounds like floaters to me...I get them from time to time...they can mean a number of things - when I was pregnant, it was one of the signs my pre-eclampsia was getting worse (high blood pressure and kidney problems), but I get them normally b/c I have protein spots in my eyes...if you tell an optometrist to check for floaters, they should dilate her eyes and look at them to check to make sure that's what it is...
I am in the migraine camp. I had something similar as a child- I would see patterns of lights in front of my eyes sometimes when I was trying to fall asleep, when I was tired, in bright sun, etc. I developed the headaches in my late teens. Now I get flashing lights followed by tunnel vision followed by blinding pain. If it is migraine related, hopefully hers will stay just visual!
It sounds like "floaters" or optical migraines.
I get what I call "fairy lights". I see them when I am exhausted and over-caffeinated. There are little pins of white light they fly in random patterns in front of my face (not really -visually, this is what I experience). I have had my eyes checked, and was told this phenomenon is neurological. Does your daughter get enough rest? Does she get to drink soda at all?
Has she been playing video games or on the computer a lot? I get these sometimes when I've been sitting at the screen for a long time.
floaters?? But they are more like clear bug shapes then light as in bright lightbulb type of light. Maybe she has synastastia (not sure on spelling) and is seeing things as light? Migraines without the headache?
Parasites like bartonella. Need to be tested by a true pans or Lyme doctor.
I get them when I turn my head too sharp ( looking at kids , in back seat ). I have been told it's from pinching a nerve.
I get ocular migraines which means I get the halos without the headache. Mine look like a neon worm or snake in my field of vision. They tend to last about 20-30 minutes, and occasionally I have a light headache afterwards. Dehydration seems to make mine worse, and a lot of intense staring at a computer. It is possible that the halos come in smaller dot versions for her instead of the worm variety I see since I would call mine light snakes or light worms, not bugs. My doctor tells me there is nothing much they can do about them, just to take a painkiller if I have pain.
http://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/guide/ocular-mig...
Oh, and some 10+ years ago I took allergy meds that started with an H and they caused me to hallucinate (really seeing bugs crawling up my arm that were not there) but that only lasted the day I took the medicine and that med is off the market.
When I am exhaussted I get them.. also when Blood Pressure is up.
Is she eating any new foods? Anything chagne.. when did this start, does it line up with any new stresses?
