Something's not right - developing CLIPPERS

Holidaying on the Greek island of Rhodes in May 2011 was the turning point and the end of my pre-CLIPPERS existence (if that doesn't sound too dramatic). Below is a short account of the time between first overt symptoms and being admitted to hospital for investigation.

Double Vision
The week after I got back I was watching television when I noticed that the peripheral vision on my right side was going slightly double. It was worse the further away and the further over to the right I was looking (by moving my eyes not my head). As the doubling was slight and only affected the edge of my vision I wasn't too concerned at first. Also I wear contact lenses for short-sight and get my eyes checked out twice a year so I knew there wasn't anything that got flagged up at my last eye exam. I could watch tv without a problem and get to work OK albeit with that weird feeling that there's something happening in the corner of your eye that you can't quite see.

Deconstructing C.L.I.P.P.E.R.S.

So what is CLIPPERS anyway? Well the acronym doesn't give much away and expanding it out isn't immediately informative to the non-specialist. So I'll break CLIPPERS down into it's component parts to show how CLIPPERS is really just a description of the syndrome. As usual this is my interpretation of a complex phenomena about which I don't have special knowledge (apart from experiencing it first hand!) so a full explanation will require some more book work. (AKGTQENR3XWH)

About Living With CLIPPERS

This blog is about a recently characterised brain disorder called CLIPPERS which produces a characteristic pattern of lesions (spots) in the brain. These lesions interfere with normal functioning in many tasks related to coordination, balance and (double) vision amongst others. I am a 44 year-old unremarkably healthy male who was diagnosed with CLIPPERS in September 2011. CLIPPERS is controversial because it's diagnosis is circumstantial at the moment and so there isn't any straight-forward test which identifies it. This also means that a diagnosis of CLIPPERS can be changed if the observations no-longer fit the pattern. It it is quite possible that in a few years it will be considered a special case of another disorder or there will be turn out to be several different kinds of CLIPPERS with their own patterns of progression or response to treatment.