Crying from one eye only after an accident?!


Question: Crying from one eye only after an accident?
Around two years ago, I fell off my horse and after that tears flow only from one eye when I cry. The weird thing is that when I am working out and sweating, tears start flowing from the eye that doesn't cry. I don't experience any dryness or itchiness from that eye. The bad thing is that when I cry, my normal eye gets red and swollen and the other one doesn't. Also, after my accident every time I work out my nose gets really leaky.

Answers:

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When you fell off your horse 2 years ago, did you have any injuries around your eye area from that?

If your eyes or face were not involved in any way from the horse fall, then it is very unlikely it had anything to do with it.

Does the eye that "doesn't cry" still get wet when you do?

And then I understand that the eye that "does cry" will have tears that spill over your eyes and run onto your cheek?

There are two reasons why tears spill over your eyelid margin and onto your cheek (whether you are crying or not).
1) There are too many tears for the drainage system in your eye to handle. Such as when crying.
2) The drainage system is blocked. Such as if your eye is watering all the time and is always spilling onto your cheek.

There are several glands around your eyes that produce tears. And there are different kinds of tears. The tears you make when you cry don't come from the same gland that lubricates the front surface of your eye on a daily basis. So if I understand what you are saying, it is possible you may have over- or under-acting glands different in each eye.

Eyes becoming red and swollen when crying actually is a normal thing. Some people have that when they cry and some people don't.

As far as your nose being runny after you work out, that actually is a normal variant as well. (I know this because my nose also runs when I work out.) However, if it is drastically different than it was before your horse fall and you did sustain some sort of injury to your face, it might be related.

Overall, it doesn't sound like anything you are experiencing is worriesome. As long as you are not being irritated, have dry eye, have blurry vision, have a stuffy/runny "allergy-type" nose, etc etc I wouldn't really worry about it.

But if you are really worried about these things, you can see an ear/nose/throat specialist for your nose being leaky. And you can see an optometrist (eye doctor) about the 2 eyes being different with their tears.

ADD:
That is known as Bell's Palsy, when your facial nerve is damaged temporarily due to trauma. The facial nerve is what allows you to control your face muscles. Just like your brain has two hemispheres (one on each side) there also is a right and left facial nerve which controls the different halves of the face.

However, the facial nerve is also important for certain things in your eyes! That is the nerve that allows you to voluntarily close your eyes, and it also is responsible for innervation to the glands in your eye (via the parasympathetic system) that make different types of tears.

There are 3 types of tears: maintenance teras (the "everyday" tears that keep your eye lubricated), reflex tears (the type that happens when something gets into your eye or startles you), or emotional tears (obviously, the tears that happen when you cry). These 3 different types of tears are secreted by different glands in your eye.

It can get very complex with you are dealing with cranial nerves, sympathetic vs. parasympathetic systems, innervation, etc .... so the main idea is that your facial nerve that was once damaged in your accident is involved with tearing and lacrimation on that same side of your face.

So if the strange assymetry between your two eyes is bothering you and you want to get it checked out, a neuro-ophthalmologist would be the best specialty doctor to see about the problem. However, I know that neuro-ophthalmologists are VERY hard to find and if you do find one, they often don't take new patients because they are so busy. So it actually might be easier for you to see an optometrist first and then see if it would warrent a referral to an appropriate specialist.

However, there are many optometrists out there who deal very heavy with brain and cranial nerve stuff (due to the shortage of neuro-ophthalmologists) so you may very well find an optometrist who is very comfortable with dealing with nerve and brain stuff!

But if nothing is bothering you (no dry eye, no headaches, no irritation, no blurry vision, etc), I really wouldn't worry about it too much. Just keep getting regular yearly eye exams like you would anyway, to make sure the rest of your eye is healthy too.

I am an optometry intern.



Was there any sort of head/brain damage? I know a guy who had some sort of brain cancer as a child, and he had surgery to get rid of it. Apparently something went wrong in the surgery, because ever since then (he is in his 50's or 60's) he only sweats on one half of his body. Maybe something similar could have happened? I'd ask a doctor.




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