Listening to her gut instinct, Kayleigh learnt the true cause of her headaches and blurred vision
A woman has urged anyone who has been putting off a medical appointment to make time to get checked, as it could be life-saving. Without taking her own advice, she could not have found out about her brain condition until it was too late.
Kayleigh Williams shared her story on TikTok (@kayleighwilliams.x) after a routine eye exam revealed a much more serious condition lurking in the background. She said: “I booked [the appointment] purely because I was getting quite a lot of headaches, a lot more than usual, and a little bit blurred vision.
“It’s very hard for me to know because I do suffer from headaches and a little bit of blurred vision anyway. But, something in me was like, you need to go and get checked.”
Kayleigh’s optician noticed some swelling behind her left eye and referred her for further testing with a neurologist. But, she later got the call from the hospital asking her to come straight away.
She said: “I have health anxiety [so] I just burst into tears, I was so scared. I can’t explain to you how scared I was.” At the hospital, the mum-of-two had more tests and was told she’d need a head scan to rule out a brain tumour.
Kayleigh told the specialists that she hadn’t noticed any major symptoms beyond the headaches she had dismissed as normal. A few days after the extra testing, results confirmed that a brain tumour was “unlikely.”
She explained: “I had a visual field test, where they test your reactions to flashing lights and stuff. [The doctor] said I passed with flying colours. If there were to be something like a brain tumour, my visual fields would not have passed in the way that they did.”
In the end, the doctor believed the mum had something called intracranial hypertension (IH), which, according to the NHS website, is “a build-up of pressure around the brain.”
Sometimes though there is no obvious reason why pressure builds up around the brain. Build-up of pressure with no known cause is known as idiopathic intracranial hypertension.
IH is a rare condition that mainly affects women in their 20s and 30s. While the cause, or causes, of idiopathic IH is unknown, a number of risk factors have been linked to the condition such as taking certain medicines, an excess amount of vitamin A, a lack of red blood cells or some hormone conditions.
Symptoms of IH can include:
- a constant throbbing headache which may be worse in the morning, or when coughing or straining; it may improve when standing up
- temporary loss of vision – your vision may become dark or “greyed out” for a few seconds at a time; this can be triggered by coughing, sneezing or bending down
- feeling and being sick
- feeling sleepy
- feeling irritable
- finding it difficult or painful to look at bright lights (photophobia)
- hearing a pulsing rhythmic noise in your ears (pulsatile tinnitus)
- problems with co-ordination and balance
- mental confusion
- loss of feeling or weakness
Idiopathic IH is not usually life-threatening, but it can be a lifelong problem. It can affect your vision and there’s a risk that you could lose your vision, according to the NHS.
To end her video, Kayleigh urged anyone with a health worry to avoid putting off any sort of check-up or appointment. Without going to her, she would never have known about her issue that could have been life-altering.
She said: “I really wanted to raise awareness of how important your routine checks are. They could save your life.
“I’m so grateful for the opticians to find this with this new, like, technology thing that they’ve got, because I don’t know until I know what’s wrong with me. She could have saved my life.”