Seeing multicolored spots
A few weeks ago, my DS, just turned 9, told me he was seeing multicolored spots of light across his field of vision. At first I thought he was describing the colors you sometimes see when you close your eyes at night. But he says the spots are always there, even in daytime, just more vivid in the dark. He has started going to sleep with the light on because he doesn't like seeing the spots. He says they are tiny, like pixels on the computer screen. They don't interfere with his vision too much, but he knows they are not supposed to be there, and that bothers him.
Does this sound like an hallucination? A side effect from Prozac? An eye problem?
DS's provisional diagnosis is schizoaffective, and in the past, he has seen shadowy figures out of the corner of his eye and has had the illusion that an inanimate object was a person (e.g., He thought someone was coming towards him in the yard, but it turned out to be a stick.) He has also heard a voice commenting on what he is doing, and another one calling his name.
Given DS's previous psychotic symptoms, I think the spots could well be an hallucination coming from the underlying illness. DS was taken off an antipsychotic (Zyprexa) at the same time he started the Prozac. On the other hand, I know antidepressants can cause mania in bipolar disorder, so I wonder whether the spots are a weird side effect from the Prozac. DS has also begun pacing at night and says he feels he is "being followed everywhere by armed security."
Pdoc, in case you are wondering, is out of town (back on Monday). The pdoc who is covering for him says she has not heard of multicolored lights being a psychiatric symptom and thinks the problem may be neurological--e.g., something wrong with the optic nerve. She did say the feeling of being followed was definitely a psychotic symptom and that DS probably does need to be on an antipsychotic. I've added back in the Risperdal DS used to be on, though at a lower dose than before, and that has helped with the pacing and with DS's behavior. (He can be physically aggressive towards me, in addition to arguing and making unreasonable demands.) The spots are still there, though.
I haven't posted here often, and reading over what I have written here is hard. DS sounds really ill! And yet he can have a day like today when he is sweet and funny and cooperative. (He is sick with a cold and fever, and I think that and the Risperdal have helped mellow him out.)
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Margaret
DS 9, adopted at 5 mos., Schizoaffective Disorder (Trileptal 600 mg., Lithium 900 mg., Prozac 5 mg., Risperdal 1.5 mg.)
DD 5, adopted at 4 1/2 mos., amazingly well adjusted considering all she has seen and heard
Have you contacted the pdoc about this? He also sounds like he's having sx of a paranoid delusion. Do you think the Risperdal helps the psychotic sx? have you tried going up on the dose? He may need a combination of an old AP and an atypical AP. This is helpful for some people who have difficult to treat psychotic sx.
Also, if his sx seem to be getting worse since starting the Prozac, I would definitely wonder if it was inducing mania. I think it's time to talk to the pdoc.
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Brenda,50, CABF Parent to Parent Volunteer
Mom to A, 15 1/2, BP, Tourette's, OCD, ADHD: Eskalith CR, Trilafon, Lamictal, Seroquel, Cytomel
E, 14, BP,AS, hypothyroidism: Seroquel, Eskalith CR, levothyroxin, inositol
B, 13 & H, 10
Married 17 years to DH, 49
If CABF has helped you, please help CABF. Donate today. http://www.bpkids.org/donate?campaign=forums2010
FROM CABF: Do not start, stop, or change medications or other treatments for yourself or your child based on what you read on this Website or elsewhere on the Internet. Information presented here should not replace the considered judgement of a doctor who knows you or your child.
Just fyi---a few years ago this happened to my husband and it turned out to be migraines. He never had the headaches but an MRI did reveal plaque on his brain.....his eye doctor dx'd that and he's been fine ever since. He takes some medication for his eyes.....just adding my 2 cents......i thought it was weird at the time but you just never know. good luck,
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Anonymom
DS 9, adopted at 5 mos., Schizoaffective Disorder (Trileptal 600 mg., Lithium 900 mg., Prozac 5 mg., Risperdal 1.5mg.)
DD 5, adopted at 4 1/2 mos., amazingly well adjusted considering all she has seen and heard
sue-nc, I thought of a migraine, since I know it's possible to have the aura without the headache. I thought auras lasted only half an hour or so, though, not all day. Did your husband see spots all the time? I've called a pediatric ophthamologist, but he can't see DS till late September.
Brenda, the pdoc will be back from vacation tomorrow, and I will call him then. The Risperdal does help some with the psychotic symptoms, but if DS takes any more than he is on now, he starts to drool. He has also gained quite a bit of weight on the Risperdal. Unfortunately, DS has not been able to tolerate at all any of the other antipsychotics we've tried (Abilify, Seroquel, Geodon, Zyprexa). Pdoc is reluctant to prescribe any of the older APs, since they are known for having even more side effects. He decided to try the Prozac, even though it can has the potential to make things worse, to address the obsessive component of DS's demands. DS has actually shown more flexibility since starting the Prozac. It gives him diarrhea, though, so I guess he'll have to go off it even if it is not causing the spots and delusions.
Thanks for the input.
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Anonymom
DS 9, adopted at 5 mos., Schizoaffective Disorder (Trileptal 600 mg., Lithium 900 mg., Prozac 5 mg., Risperdal 1.5mg.)
DD 5, adopted at 4 1/2 mos., amazingly well adjusted considering all she has seen and heard
It's so weird that you mentioned that. My 8 yr old daughter said she sees colored spots too. I explained we often have black floaters that float across our field of vision, but she said that they are colored spots. Since she seems a bit of a hypocondriac, I never pressed the issue. She does have frequent headaches. Maybe for her it is migraines. She's never had any hallucinations before.
Sue-nc: The meds for your husbands eys, Is it for the migraines?
My DD sees the color spots or blobs all the time. This is one of her frequent hallucinations.
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grapevine, 34
DH, 44
stepdaughter, 12 undiagnosed, unmedicated
DS, 4
the medicine is for eye health in general because he also has macular degeneration. The colored spots come and go but never a headache so he's not on a medication for that. There was a study once about the connection between these mental illnesses and migraines.....closely related but I can't remember where I saw that study. Anyway, my son also has migraines but he doesn't (or at least has never told us) that he sees the colors.....it's just another avenue worth checking out. I was surprised with hubbys dx but it was true.....
also, when he was seeing the colors (and they are not every day) they do last a good portion of the day. He hasn't had this in a while tho.......I would just check it out. You never know....
Well, the pdoc finally called about 9:30 p.m. Apparently, he had quite a backlog of calls after his two-week vacation! Unfortunately, DS was starting to melt down, and though I tried several times I was unable to complete the conversation with the pdoc. (I'm a single mom, so there was no one else to help out.) Pdoc was very understanding and agreed to call back tomorrow morning before his first appointment. I'm sure I will have an answer--or at least a new direction--soon, but let me just say, HOW FRUSTRATING not to be able to finish the call!!!
Of course, not long after I hung up, DS was crying and asking "Why is this happening to me?" He said he doesn't want to act this way and feels like a puppet being controlled by someone else. :(
We're leaving town tomorrow for a quick vacation (only 45 minutes from home--I'm afraid to go farther) so I probably won't post again till Friday. Thanks everyone for letting me know of your experiences with/knowledge of colored spots. I knew DS couldn't be the only one seeing them.
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Anonymom
DS 9, adopted at 5 mos., Schizoaffective Disorder (Trileptal 600 mg., Lithium 900 mg., Prozac 5 mg., Risperdal 1.5mg.)
DD 5, adopted at 4 1/2 mos., amazingly well adjusted considering all she has seen and heard
I just noticed that your DS is adopted. Do you know any of his mental health family background, or prenatal care? There are a lot of issues that us adopted moms deal with when we don't fully know our kids' histories.
I hope you have fun on your vacation!
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grapevine, 34
DH, 44
stepdaughter, 12 undiagnosed, unmedicated
DS, 4
Enjoy your mini-vacation! We have used two older AP's here with good results. Currently ds15 is on Trilafon (perphenazine) which has a low incidence of SE's. I've never noticed any SE's for him with this med, and it definitely helps the anger.
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Brenda,50, CABF Parent to Parent Volunteer
Mom to A, 15 1/2, BP, Tourette's, OCD, ADHD: Eskalith CR, Trilafon, Lamictal, Seroquel, Cytomel
E, 14, BP,AS, hypothyroidism: Seroquel, Eskalith CR, levothyroxin, inositol
B, 13 & H, 10
Married 17 years to DH, 49
If CABF has helped you, please help CABF. Donate today. http://www.bpkids.org/donate?campaign=forums2010
FROM CABF: Do not start, stop, or change medications or other treatments for yourself or your child based on what you read on this Website or elsewhere on the Internet. Information presented here should not replace the considered judgement of a doctor who knows you or your child.
Enjoy the vacation and I hope your pdoc has some suggestions. There is a type of epilepsy (partial, sensory) that has aura as a symptom which includes changes in vision. "Emotional disturbances" are also common. These are usually very short in length. An EEG is used for dx.
Best wishes.
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Kristy
13 yr. old son
dx bp at 4
hospitalized on med wash
I talked to the pdoc just before we left on our trip, and he told me to drop the Prozac and see what happened. It took four or five days, but the diarrhea is gone, the pacing has stopped, and the paranoia has lessened. Unfortunately, the spots are still there. I also spent a large part of our vacation attempting to deal with DS's increasingly aggressive demands. We didn't get much beyond the hotel pool and a few fast food-type restaurants. Oh, well, at least the hotel was nice, and I didn't have to cook or clean for three days.
Grapevine, I wish I knew more about DS's birthfamily's medical history. It's all unknown. I do know his birthmother was under extreme stress while pregnant with him, and I think that may partly explain his anxiety and fear of harm. Pdoc told me recently that he thinks DS's issues are mainly genetic, and that his illness would be unfolding in a similar way even if he were being raised in his birthfamily.
Brenda, I will ask the pdoc about Trilafon. The Risperdal does help, just not enough. DS definitely needs help with anger!
Kristy, DS had a sleep-deprived EEG last fall, and it didn't show any seizure activity. (I know sometimes the seizures just don't occur during testing.) He also had an MRI this spring that revealed an arachnoid cyst on the temporal lobe. We were referred to a neurosurgeon who said the cyst was small and could not be causing any problems.
I will talk to the pdoc again tomorrow evening. Last week, he said he was considering adding either Lexapro or fluoxamine for the OCD-type symptoms. I'm going to ask him if I can go back up on DS's Lithium, too. That was reduced when pdoc thought it might be contributing to the diarrhea.
I still don't know what to make of the spots. I was able to get DS an appointment with a different eye doctor this Friday, but I don't really expect that to turn up anything. Pdoc says just about any med can have vision changes as a side effect, but since the spots didn't go away when the Prozac was dropped, my guess is that they are hallucinations.
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Anonymom
DS 9, adopted at 5 mos., Schizoaffective Disorder (Trileptal 600 mg., Lithium 900 mg., Risperdal 1.5mg.)
DD 5, adopted at 4 1/2 mos., amazingly well adjusted considering all she has seen and heard
I wonder if the cyst could be causing anything?
My DD seems to be following in her mother's footsteps, despite our efforts to give her a safe and loving environment. So I really believe that despite our best efforts to care for her, she might end up with bad schizophrenia like her mother. My DD is becoming more vocal with me about her hallucinations. And she does tell me that she has almost always had them. So maybe your son just hasn't been able to talk to you about them yet? It is a hard thing to talk about period! But, colored blobs are one of her more common visual hallucinations.
I got a good idea from one of the ladies on my support group....I am going to ask DD to draw a comic strip, or write stories about her voices/visualizations. It might help get a better idea of what she is experiencing.
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grapevine, 34
DH, 44
stepdaughter, 12 undiagnosed, unmedicated
DS, 4
Hi anonymom,
I used to experience the same thing as a child - actually, I still do. The spots are most prevalent when I'm tired. When I was very young, 3 or 4 years old, I used to love to sneak into the living room at night, and use my imagination to make the spots shape things and slip through my fingers. This sounds disturbing to even me now, but I never had a bad experience with this. During that time in my life, I was deliberately exhausting myself, because the more tired I was, the more vivid the colors would be. I was content to sit in my living room with my cat and the spots alone in the dead of night. I think the less tired your son is, the less vivid the spots will be.
The good news - I'm pretty sane. I don't have any problems. However, I unfortunately have to say I do think there's a good chance that migraines will be in your son's future. I get migraines. It's the only neurological issue I have. I didn't start getting them until I was 14, and they didn't start becoming a hindrance until 16. The spots seem to be a real mystery though - maybe there is no real connection between them and migraines.
Eukaryote,
I wanted to comment on your colored spots and migraines. My younger daughtersaw colors like through colored cellophane or stained-glass windows. She also had migraines. Some things were hallucinations and some were migraine auras. It was often difficult to distinguish which, and I ended feeling that everything was all intertwined... like her migraines, her schizoaffective, her depression, her sleep issues, her tics... whatever... perhaps they were all one underlying problem. In the end, I do notice that a lot of issues - her migraines perhaps most noticeably - involved mitochondrial function.
--"Naomi"
It's Not Mental
Older dd: formerly(?) teen-onset bipolar: After over 13 years - stable off psych meds over a year. Now fine on just diet changes and higher thyroid levels after healing - addressing gut issues/Candidal overgrowth while using EMPowerPlus and other supplements.
Younger dd: formerly(?) Childhood-onset schizoaffective, TS, OCD with disabling migraines since infancy. After over 15 years, is "recovered" for 4 years after treating endocrine issues, food sensitivities, gut issues, sleep issues, nutritional/mitochondrial needs.
Actually, after a little bit of digging, I think I've found your answer... Hopefully you've been able to find it by now anyway, but it's called "Visual Snow." Wikipedia has an article about it, along with an animation of what purple visual snow (spots) look like. Unfortunately it's tiny, but it's exactly what I see, just purple instead of multicolored. The article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow