Sudden vision improvement in right eye.

[torqus_opus]

I had, what I initially thought was a stroke, but ended up being the mother of all panic attacks according to multiple doctors.
The next day or two, I noticed my right eye could suddenly see license plates from a long distance away when I was out walking my dog. Left eye was still reliably garbage as before the incident.

Prior to this I had the same -3.0 in both eyes for over 15 years at least.
After doing a few informal tests of my own, I realized the vision in my right eye:
Is worse than my left eye in low light conditions.
Is better than my left eye in bright sunny light.

I’ve been referred to a lot of doctors for a battery of tests to rule out neurological issues. Hence the panic attack diagnosis, which I’m totally fine with since it means I’m not dying, haha. I hope they’re right.

My eye doctor ran a bunch of tests as well. Eye health was perfectly fine.

The reason I’m here is she had never heard of someone’s vision suddenly improving.
She looked at me like I was making things up just like the previous docs.

I’ve got a software engineer brain and it doesn’t like the imprecision of these answers I’ve been given. So I’m trying to understand: what kind of mechanism could possibly cause this variability? I’ve google searched and even attempted to dig thru academic papers but I’m not even sure what to search for, so I came up empty.
All signs point to my insanity, haha.
The pesky fact of me being able to measure how much farther away I can read letters now after less than a minute in the sun is eating at me.
Thoughts?

[Ron_AKA]

I have had two situation where my vision improved. One was very quickly in a matter of 2 days. It was when I was diagnosed with diabetes with a very high BG level. It was very quickly corrected with a drug that stimulates insulin and brought my BG level down rapidly. All of a sudden I could see better with my glasses off compared to being on. I understand it was due to pressure in the eyes from the rapid change in BG in the body compared to in the eye. It happened with both eyes, and would not explain your improvement in one eye only. However if there was a change in the intraocular pressure in one eye for another reason that could be a clue. However, I presume you have had the pressure checked.

The other time was due to cataracts and happened very slowly over a couple of years. My sphere actually went down while cylinder went up due to the cataract forming.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

One or both eyes vision can improve at distance due to a number of factors: uncontrolled diabetes the elevated blood sugar can make the vision better/worse/ change frequently,  early cataract formation can make a farsighted eye better in the early stages of cataract rarely make myopia better, corneal disease like keratoconus can do it (a cornea topography is necessary for diagnosis ,  some drugs and pregnancy can cause changing vision sometimes better/sometimes worse, wearing contact lens can make myopia better without glasses (the basis for a treatment for progressive myopia)   rarely a tumor behind the eye, also swelling of the macula (macular edema), spasm of accommodation.  Those would be the most common

[torqus_opus]

Right, my doctors were fortunately aware of all these possibilities, which is why I went thru so much testing and putting my head into a couple of machines that I can’t remember the name of, with the unfortunate end result being “there’s nothing wrong with your eye.”

This was sudden onset after a supposed panic attack. Not gradual.

Based on your answer and the answer from my docs, it appears this would unfortunately be an uncommon case.

Thank you for responding.
I suppose this is my life now.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

There are a lot of much worse things you could have to live with.  Have you eyes checked regularily and if any new symptoms develop return sooner.