Originally Posted by DjBenC
Sometimes, mostly weekends I wake up in the morning as normal but I get a very sharp pain in my right eye like someones stuck a pin in there, if I open my eye to look at it it just fills up with tears and I cant see. I have to sit and wait about 30 minutes for the pain to go away then I can see again.
I have been to the doctor who has told me that its just the back end of a bad migrane but I dont see how this can be possible.
Hi Ben -
This ain't migraines.
Sounds like you had a corneal erosion. Go see a corneal specialist. At many offices you can walk-in for this kind of thing and they can see where the erosion occurred, but the cornea heals so quickly (literally hours) that it's hard for them to see unless you go the same day it happened. They will probably suggest Muro ointment or Muro drops (helps some people - it's over-the-counter).
There is also a board here called Recurrent Corneal Erosion with tons and tons of pages of advice.
People who suffer from recurrent corneal erosions have almost exactly this same symptom: wake up in the morning feeling like someone stabbed them with an icepick. I had an extremely bad case of this for two years (nightly erosions) and finally had surgery to clear it up. Many can prevent erosions by being diligent about using various preservative-free eyedrops and letting them seep into the eye in the morning before opening their eyes (takes a while to learn this). If you start having the erosions in the middle of the night or middle of the day, it may be harder to handle. Sleeping position can affect it, amount of sun exposure during the day, computer use, etc.
Broadly speaking, what can happen is that the eyelid sticks to the cornea during the night and when you open your eyes, the corneal cells come off with your eyelid and don't stay on the cornea. Some people don't sleep with their eyes all the way closed so that the lower portions of their eyes become very dry. If you have ever had any trauma to the eye - even years ago - it can scar the cornea so that cells don't stick at that location as well as they should... then some day WHAM it comes back. If it's not from trauma, you probably have a dystrophy that prevents corneal cells from adhering well. These dystrophies are extremely common, and most people will never know they have one.
But go see a corneal specialist, although any ophthalmologist should be able to recognize this.