Spotlight on: Sophia Tyr ???? @sophytyr
“hello!! My name is Sophia, I’m 17 years old and I live in NSB, Florida. I’ve been suffering from visual snow syndrome for almost a year. The first time I experienced VSS symptoms was a month after taking hormonal birth control pills prescribed to me for my heavy menstrual cycles by an obstetrician-gynecologist in February 2021. I had struggled with ocular, hormone-induced migraines throughout my life (also known as ‘migraine with aura’) and I worried that taking birth control pills with artificial hormones in them would worsen the migraines. However, the gynecologist reassured me that the opposite effect would occur and the migraines could even disappear entirely.
After having finished my first set of pills in March, though, I started to have more frequent ocular migraines. I felt sleepy and distracted all day; I felt panicky and anxious at night. My head throbbed constantly, my muscles twitched when I tried to relax them, and I couldn’t fall asleep unless I had been awake for 48 hours beforehand. The static in my vision began in March, but by mid-April, my visual snow syndrome symptoms were increasingly intense: light sensitivity, negative afterimages, flickering visual field, and more static. At the end of May, I finally explained to my parents that what I was experiencing might be visual snow syndrome, and I even attempted to show them an article from the VSI. Instead of listening, though, they insisted I was delusional and I was admitted into a psych ward soon after. My manic episodes and ‘ongoing hallucinations’ they described to psychiatrists forced me to take an antipsychotic pill twice a day and stop taking the birth control pills. This medication made me feel numb, and I was never vocal about my symptoms from that point on.
While most of us struggle in silence, the fact that thousands around the world are quietly overcoming visual snow syndrome and making peace with their symptoms fills me with so much happiness and relief that I’m not alone. I am more than grateful to the VSI for spreading awareness ???? thank you :)”
