An East Kilbride teen has told what life is like with her rare and debilitating condition.
Since she was a child, Paris Haigh has seen “millions of TV-like static dots” flickering in her vision 24-hours a day.
Not realising this was unique to her and thinking everyone around her saw it too, she brushed it aside for many years.
Being autistic, 19-year-old Paris put her visual difficulties down to her sensory processing issues.
But one day, on the eve of her 18th birthday, she was outside and believed it to be pouring with rain, only to discover it was all in her vision.
“That’s when I decided to Google about this static in my vision and came across the term ‘visual snow syndrome’,” Paris told Lanarkshire Live.
Visual snow is an uncommon neurological condition that causes both visual and non-visual symptoms.
Also known as visual static , affected individuals see white, black, transparent, or coloured dots across the whole visual fields.
The condition is typically always present and has no known cure.
One study estimated that the condition could affect up to three per cent of the UK population, but the exact amount is unclear.
Paris added: “It was a massive relief because for years I was convinced that I was going blind on several occasions as my vision would become extremely blurry and I would experience many bizarre flashes of colour.
“I experience a range of visual and non-visual symptoms.
“The visual ones include the layer of static dots across the whole visual field (visual snow), light sensitivity, after images, trails behind things, floaters, pulsating vision, flashes of colour, ghostsing, enhanced blue field entoptic phenomenon and night blindness.
“My non-visual symptoms include vertigo, depersonalisation, tinnitus and a suspected migraine which effects my nerves down one side of my body.
“The severity of my visual snow syndrome fluctuates with some days or several days being awful, and other days I can forget that I have it despite my visual symptoms still being there.”
Paris also has issues with reading and wears special orange-tinted glasses which help with his sensory processing disorder.
She claims the glasses also reduce her visual snow, but don’t quite eliminate it.
Paris added: “The words ripple and the gaps between the words form rivers down the page. The words and pages also flash and I sometimes see double of a word, usually in purple - the words have a ghosting effect.”
Paris recalled major tension and anxiety before she discovered her condition, which she is now seeking a formal diagnosis for.
She said: “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.
“Now that I know what visual snow syndrome is I am a lot more relieved as, even though my symptoms can be scary and annoying, I know they aren’t dangerous and there isn’t anything wrong with my eyes, but it is in fact that my brain has issues filtering out visual information.
“I am trying to seek a formal diagnosis but this has proven extremely difficult as the opthamologist and nuerologist I went to hadn’t heard of the condition - very few professionals know of it.”
Despite, the static clouding her vision for so long, nature lover Paris, who dreams of working in wildlife conservation, insists she is now so attached to her special condition she wouldn’t want to live without it.
She added: “Many people are surprised to hear that if there was a cure, I wouldn’t take it.
“As debilitating as the condition can be, it is the way I have always seen and I think it would freak me out if I stopped seeing this way.
“It can be very beautiful.”
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