‘Rare condition leaves my vision with TV static’

From early childhood, Paris Haigh’s vision is marred by tiny shimmering spots.

These spots look like TV static and are a constant presence in your life. Now 19 years old, the young woman sees these spots when she goes shopping or when she studies at college. She can see them even when she closes her eyes.

Haigh lives in the town of East Kilbride in southern Scotland. For many years, she thought that all people saw these spots too. When she found out it wasn’t, she thought it was due to her autism and a sensory processing disorder — a condition that makes her senses especially sensitive.

She then began to wonder if she was the only person in the world who saw these spots. Until Haigh heard about “visual snow,” a little-known neurological condition that causes both visual and non-visual symptoms.

‘Big layer’ of static

One study estimated that this condition could affect up to 3% of the UK population, but the exact amount of people affected is unclear. The main symptom of visual snow is the tiny continuous spots in the patient’s vision, which differ in color and severity from one person to another.

“It’s like a big layer of TV static covering my entire vision, 24/7,” according to Haigh. “I can see her even when I close my eyes.”

Other people have described this condition as a sort of pixelated vision.

Haigh says he can filter out stains most of the time, but some days it’s more difficult. “There are some days when they are in front of me all the time. It can be very distracting. [a atenção]”, she reports.

What does visual snow look like?

There are a few conditions that cause the shimmering spots to become stronger — for Haigh, tiredness, anxiety, headaches, or whenever she’s in very bright or dark environments.

Using cosmetic products can also cause problems. “I don’t actually wear makeup, but whenever I apply eyeshadow, it disturbs my eyes and my visual snow gets so bad I can’t see for days,” she says.

To read, Haigh wears special glasses with orange lenses, which help with his sensory processing disorder. She claims the glasses also reduce her visual snow, but don’t quite eliminate it.

“Sometimes the words kind of have an aura around them, or I see the same word in purple above it. Most of the time, they’re just flickering or the space between the words will look like a river running down the page, making with the words to oscillate”, she describes.

In addition to visual snow, Haigh also suffers from “excessive image persistence”, which causes her to continue to see images even after looking away. She also says she sees random colored flashes, pulsating vision and night blindness.

“I need a night light every night, because I start to see a darkness that creeps in at the edges of my eyes and starts to cover my entire vision, until everything is black except for the spots,” she reports.

Before Haigh knew what visual snow was, this situation caused a lot of tension and anxiety. “I remember once sitting at school, my eyesight just started to deteriorate for an hour or two. People’s faces were getting blurry and I was pretty sure I was going blind,” she recalls.

‘Visual buzz’

Despite having lived with this condition all her life, Paris Haigh only learned about visual snow shortly before she turned 18 years old.

“One day, it looked like it was raining, but in reality, there was nothing there. So I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll Google this,'” she recalls.

When she typed her symptoms into the search engine, the visual snow immediately appeared. Learning what caused the static blurs in her vision was a relief to Haigh.

“Since I now know what it is and I know it’s not dangerous, it’s made me feel a lot better. I can cope better,” she says.

Jon Stone, a consultant in neurology and honorary professor of neurology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, has previously examined patients with visual snow. He told the BBC that this condition is caused by a problem with the way the brain handles visual information.

“Normally, our brain filters out visual experiences that we don’t want well,” he says. “This filtering system doesn’t work as well in people with visual snow, probably because parts of the brain’s visual system are overactive, in a harmful way. It’s a bit like having tinnitus, but of vision.”

Formal diagnosis

Stone says that while more ophthalmologists are becoming aware of this condition, it can sometimes take some time for a patient to find a professional who recognizes it.

According to the Visual Snow Initiative — an American organization dedicated to research on visual snow — about 56% of people with the condition are misdiagnosed.

Haigh hopes to get a formal diagnosis for her visual snow, but she says the experience has been frustrating. She consulted with an ophthalmologist and a neurologist about the condition, but felt they didn’t know about her. “It can seem like a made-up condition when experts have no idea what it is,” she says.

Haigh has an appointment with a neurologist about another issue and hopes to be able to work it out with him.

What if there was a cure?

Despite old concerns, Haigh now believes it would be weird to stop seeing the static.

As a child, she visited the planetarium at the Science Center in Glasgow, Scotland, but was afraid to go inside.

“As I was too scared to go, I sat in my room, imagining I was in my own planetarium,” she recalls. “I could see all these stars around me in my vision and I was my own planetarium narrator.”

Her visual snow has become more pronounced recently, but she thinks it’s a result of her knowledge of her and not that the condition has increased.

“It’s a relief to know that it has nothing to do with my vision and that it’s not dangerous. It’s just a matter of weird processing by the brain,” she says. “A lot of people want a cure for this, but I wouldn’t take it if there was one. It could be very beautiful.”