Originally published on 1/14/26

In August 2024, at just 24 years old, I experienced sudden retinal detachment and almost went fully blind in my right eye. While I was incredibly grateful for the surgery that saved my sight, the procedure left me with another issue: double vision. And it could only be fixed with not one, but two surgeries. I’m Carissa Mosness, an Associate Digital Editor at Woman’s World magazine, and here is my story, including everything you need to know about the symptoms of this serious and hard-to-live-with eye condition. 

The first signs of double vision 

Two years ago, after a few days of noticing floaters and flashes of light in my right eye, I suddenly realized that portions of my field of vision had gone black. My doctor revealed these were symptoms of retinal detachment, and I needed immediate surgery before I lost my vision permanently.

A flurry of doctor’s visits, tests and ultimately surgery followed. And recovery was a challenge. I thought I was in the clear after the sight-saving procedure, but a few weeks after surgery, I started to notice there were two of everything.

At first, I just assumed that it was because my right eye was still healing. But when it came time for me to get new contacts, my optimist Sharon Keh, OD, FAAO, noticed that there was a slight tilt in my eye—something that doctors call vertical strabismus, monocular esotropia and cyclotropia. After a series of tests, she decided that my double vision—also known as diplopia—couldn’t be fixed with prism glasses, which is what they normally give to people with this condition. 

What causes double vision?

I was then referred to Steven E. Rosenberg, MD, a strabismus and pediatric ophthalmology expert who determined I needed surgery to correct the issue. The problem? The procedure only has an 80 percent success rate.

“You have a condition where the ‘pulleys’ that hold your muscles in place, and the ring that holds the pulleys in place, were stretched out from your nearsideness,” Dr. Rosenberg explained to me. “The back of the eye was getting stuck between your muscles, which caused the double.” 

For others, Dr. Rosenberg says double vision can happen when “people either have minor strokes or suffer from an autoimmune disease like Myasthenia Gravis or thyroid ophthalmopathy. Trauma is another risk for it, and so is family history of having some misalignment of the eyes. There are also some people who are born with weak muscles in their eyes and don’t even know it, and then they start to have double vision.” 

More surgeries awaited me 

With no other options, I had surgery for my double vision in February 2025 and after it was complete, I was instructed to take it easy—which was easy, considering I was in the most amount of pain I had ever experienced in my life. 

Following that first surgery, my right eye was no longer inverted, and I thankfully didn’t look crosseyed in photos anymore. I thought this scary, painful ordeal was finally behind me—until I realized that there were still two of everything. 

Frustrated, I returned to Dr Rosenberg. Together on October 3, 2025—I remember the day, because it was the day Taylor Swift released The Life of a Showgirl—we decided that the only way to fix my consistent double vision was to operate once again. This time, though, Dr. Rosenberg wanted to go into my left eye, not right. 

At first, this made no sense. My left eye was fine; it was the right one that had been “broken” for over a year now. But Dr. Rosenberg explained that because of my two previous surgeries, my right eye was essentially too fragile to operate on. To try to fix my double vision, he would be altering the muscle in my left eye to try and align it with where my right eye muscle was, which would then—in theory—train my brain to only see one of everything. 

Would this finally fix my eyesight?

This surgery happened the week of Thanksgiving, and going into it, I was very worried. What if it messed up my good eye? What if I were in the same amount of pain I was in last time? Knowing that this one could also be a failure, though, I went into it with a completely different mindset. I wanted the surgery to work. I needed the surgery to work, so I decided to will it to work. 

And by some random act of God, it did. The week after surgery, I wasn’t in any pain—except for when I watched Season 5 of Stranger Things, which made me cry—and I just knew it was working. 

Then, eight days later, the thing I had been hoping and praying for over a year happened—there was only one of everything. My eye was fixed, and while I was super excited, I was also super scared. What if it happened again? 

“Even though everything’s great right now, there is a chance at some time over your adulthood, it could decompensate again,” Dr. Rosenberg told me. “The cumulative percentage of that is 20 percent over the rest of your life. The peak time for that to come back will be like in your early 40s, when you start needing reading glasses.” 

Still, I’m trying not to stress about it, especially since there’s not a lot I can do to keep it from happening again. 

What to do if you have symptoms of double vision 

For both myself and others, Dr. Rosenberg recommends visiting your doctor for an eye exam right away if you are experiencing double vision. While the most obvious symptom is seeing two of one object, the condition can also be characterized by:

• Trouble focusing
• Eye strain or pain when moving your eye
• A “wandering eye” that doesn’t line up with the other eye
• Droopy eyelids

For some, it “can be a sign of tumors in the brain. It could be a sign of other types of diseases that people could have. Sometimes, diabetes presents that way, or other problems [may do so]. So you want to make sure that if you do have double vision, you go to an eye doctor first. But if you have a headache or nausea [in addition to double vision], go straight to the emergency room,” he advises.  

Link to original: https://www.womansworld.com/wellness/i-had-double-vision-for-over-a-year-after-nearly-going-blind