My visual hallucinations and Dr. Charles Bonnet

 Once my vision became better organized and scanning the environment felt normal, the symptoms that interfered most with my seeing what was there and kept me from driving were the visual hallucinations. 

Visual disturbances were the initial symptoms of the stroke. They came together with migraines, but continued after the migraines stopped. In the beginning the right side of my visual field was covered by a chess board with yellow and black rectangles.  Then the chessboard was replaced with pretty decorative designs of different shapes and colors. Sometimes I saw scarves or clouds moving in the wind.  

Then I started seeing people.  Faces would pop up here and there, or whole bodied people.  For a while they were stationary, appearing next to me or across the room. For a couple of weeks they were moving towards me, or across the living room in front of me, or crossing the street in front of the car.  Whether they sat or moved they all turned, looked at me and smiled. Their presence felt very reassuring.  

After a couple of weeks of smiling people, the visions became smaller in size.  I started seeing dogs and cats crossing the room, or sitting in different places in the house. In the garden I saw butterfies and birds.  Then the designs returned, but they were smaller and less obtrusive. When I was reading little mushrooms or elves or colored shapes would pop up on the right margins of book pages. Sometimes the images would move away from the text, but often they would cover it and interfere with reading.  When I moved my eyes looking around I would often see small shapes or colored designs that would appear and then dissolve.

The neurologists I consulted were uninterested and uninformative about these symptom.  Again I had to resort to Google.  I Googled "Visual Hallucinations" and found out about Charles Bonnet.

Allan Bellows has written an amusing and informative article on "Chuck Bonnet and the Hallucinations" in the website www.damninteresting.com.

Here are some excerpts:

In the year 1760, a Swiss naturalist named Charles Bonnet became concerned when his grandfather Charles Lullin began to experience a parade of "amusing and magical visions." The eighty-nine-year-old Lullin was being visited by visions of people, birds, carriages, and buildings, all of which were invisible to everyone but him...

...Bonnet's grandfather did not demonstrate any other signs of marble loss, in fact he seemed quite sane aside from the vivid hallucinations. Moreover, the elderly man was keenly aware that the strange sights were all in his mind. Bonnet cataloged his grandfather's curious circumstances, and over time the condition he described came to be known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome, or CBS. Numerous similar cases have been recorded in the decades since, and though it has long been regarded as a rare disease, recent evidence suggests that it is much more widespread than previously believed...

...For those stricken with Charles Bonnet Syndrome, the world is occasionally adorned with vivid yet unreal images. Some see surfaces covered in non-existent patterns such as brickwork or tiles, while others see phantom objects in astonishing detail, including people, animals, buildings, or whatever else their minds may conjure. These images linger for as little as several seconds or for as much as several hours, appearing and vanishing abruptly...

...The exact cause of Charles Bonnet Syndrome is not presently known, but the popular theory suggests that the brain is merely attempting to compensate for a shortage of visual stimuli...

...One of the most thorough studies of the phenomenon was undertaken at the University Hospital in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where 505 visually handicapped patients were involved. Of those, it was found that sixty-three had experienced complex visual hallucinations in the four-week period before screening. Psychiatric examination of the patients revealed no other disorders which might cause such side effects. This and other studies suggest that as many as 15% of people with vision loss experience Charles Bonnet Syndrome hallucinations to some degree...

...Some Charles-Bonneters are able to banish their phantoms by changing the environment in some way-- such as turning the lights on or off-- though most of the time a patient is subject to their visions' whims. Others have resorted to befriending the apparitions, making idle one-sided conversation as the imaginary guests stare quietly. Fortunately the condition is almost always temporary, and in most cases the visiting visions fade away forever after twelve to eighteen months...

Click here to read the whole article.

Over the last 3 months my visions have shrunk in size and have become very infrequent. I attribute their fading away to the acupuncture and exercise regimen that I have followed.  Their disappearance, in addition to my improved capacity to read and scan, has made it possible for me to start driving again.  

Here are some additional resources for people with visual hallucinations. Click on the underlined letters to access the webpages.

Vision Aware: Why am I having visual hallucinations?

Lighthouse International: Charles Bonnet Syndrome

RNIB: Charles Bonnet Syndrome 

PsychCentral: Learning to live with Charles Bonnet syndrome