Spotlight on: Becca Walsh ????
“I started noticing my first strain of symptoms when I turned 19. The first thing that stuck out to me were intense starbursts & halos around lights at night. I knew this was something I hadn’t seen before. At that point in my life, I wasn’t out on the road much at night so it was hard to tell when the transition truly happened. I started looking up possible answers as to why this was happening, which is never a good thing to do. The signs I found online all pointed towards varying eye diseases, so I immediately made a doctor appointment.
I went to the optometrist, explained all my symptoms, had a thorough exam on my eyes, & everything came back clean. I was so confused, because I knew the things I had been seeing weren’t normal, yet I was perfectly healthy. Time went on, I kept developing a larger list of symptoms. First came large clusters of floaters, then pinpoint flashes, blue field phenomenon, after images, colored spots, & the constant static. This is what I see every single day. Aside from the visual symptoms, I also experience intense migraines on the left side of my head & tinnitus, but these do not happen nearly as often.
Now at 22, I’ve learned to work around my symptoms & adjust. At first, experiencing these visual symptoms gave me intense anxiety. It didn’t seem like my eye doctors had a solid answer for what I was experiencing. With more research I’ve done & the more stories I’ve heard, I’ve started to feel a huge sense of comfort. People with VSS should never feel alone, because there are so many out there experiencing the same thing. I hope my story can be put out there for others to read & relate. Maybe someday there will be a treatment for this syndrome, but a sense of comfort is most important. ????”
