The muscles in my left eye don't work properly. When i was 12, i got glasses, but only wore them for a few months and never went back to the opticians. I'm now 27. When i close my right eye and stare at something with my left eye, after a while, i start to feel like the inside half of my left eye starts to black over, like i'm seeing through my right eye, which is closed. Is this because the muscle isn't working properly, or could it be my actual sight? Also, last week, i noticed that my right eye isn't as sharp as my left one at long distances.

Hey, I'm not alone! No one ever understood me when I told them about that! http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/smile.gif

I have amblyopia; I've always put it down to that. My left eye is dominant. When I close it, everything goes all black or gray around the edges.

The weirdest thing is that I went to an optometrist a few years ago who said I had 20/20 vision. I missed a letter, so I think he was rounding, but essentially it was close enough as to make no difference. But my mother thinks it was much different, like 20/40 or 20/60, when I was a kid. No way it's going to improve, is it? Or is that actually a decline? I never understand those numbers. http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/smile.gif

Thanks, rushrulz. Did they tell you that they were the symptoms of amblyopia? I've never heard of that - i'll have to look it up. Do you wear glasses?

I never mentioned it to the optometrist, actually. And no, I don't wear lenses.

Oops. Lemme add to that. Amblyopia is when one eye's stronger than the other. In my case, it's because I had strabismus (misaligned eyes), which was surgically corrected when I was a toddler. The "bad" eye is weak though, I guess because it was never focused properly? I don't know all the details. I went through the goofy eye training ritual they put you through--colored plastic on the TV, an eye patch... It forces you to use the bad eye, makes it better. Some people, like me, end up basically 20/20. Probably more people end up needing lenses. It has a lot to do with the age you were when you had it fixed, I think.

Thanks. I never had my eye operated on, they just gave me lenses. I could never understand how lenses could strengthen the muscles in my eye, though. When i look in the mirror, my left eye looks like it goes out slightly, but i'm the only one who can see it, so it's not really noticable. But i only noticed it a few years ago - not since they discovered the problem.

So the older you are when you develop the weak eye, the more chance you have of having to wear lenses?

You say your bad eye is weak. With me, it's the other way round. I wonder why that is.