(06-01-2017, 09:58 PM)okay Wrote: Hi, all. 

My name is Tom.  I've been wearing prescription bi and trifocals for decades.  In that time some opticians and Ophthalmologists have told me I have astigmatism, and some claim I have no astigmatism...

I lost my glasses about three years ago and have been getting by using inexpensive 3.0 diopter reading glasses.  Frankly, I think I'm none the worse for it, and am perhaps better off, though my vision is not good.

In the past year or two I've noticed a very strange vision anomaly, and am not sure whether it's been with me all along.  I think it has been, and is the underlying source/cause of my blurred vision.  I noticed it while looking at a small red pilot light on an electronic device.  The room was dark and instead of seeing a single small dot or red light I saw a circular array of maybe 12 or 15 lights around that actual light - with additional lights filling the area between the actual/central light and the lights forming the circumference ring.

It looks like a pizza with carefully arranged pepperoni slices on top.

I've been researching a lot this past week and have learned the term "polyopia."  That seems to be what I'm exhibiting, but I'm not sure whether mine is cerebral (a brain issue) or ocular (an eye issue).  There are ways to determine which it is, but my circumstances don't apply strictly to either version.  So far, I think it's the ocular version because:

1) Use of pinhole glasses does overcome the multiple images (I can see clearly), and

2) In a dark room the multi-image array is fairly large, but turning on the light reduces it's size.

Both those results indicate an ocular rather than cerebral cause.  On the other hand, the multi-image array appears in both eyes and appears in each eye when the opposite eye is closed.  That seems to indicate cerebral rather than optical.  So I'm confused...  Ah, but look at how much I've learned thanks to the Internet!

That's my situation.  Thanks for reading.   Now I'll go ask some questions in the other forums.