Pressure Behind the Eyes: IIH Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), raised pressure in the fluid around the brain with no clear cause found. Many writers spent months being told it was migraine, eye strain, sinus trouble, malaria or typhoid or were simply told to lose weight. Contributors include a truck driver who pulled over twice with double vision, a salesman who lost the word stapler mid-pitch, a chef whose tablets made food taste of pennies, a black-cab driver fighting to keep his licence, a rugby player benched at twenty-two, a sixteen-year-old whose vision went grey in PE, and parents of children diagnosed at eleven and fourteen. They write from Leeds to Nairobi, Tucson to Buenos Aires. Treatments include tablets with tingling, a metal taste and a kidney stone, eleven lumbar punctures and the headache that can follow, a dietitian and a food notebook, a gastric sleeve, a weekly injection, a vein scan that finally showed narrowing, shunts that drained too much, and surgery on one eye to save sight. Writers also cover paying with no insurance, pregnancy and talking to a manager. Outcomes differ. One writer has lived with IIH for forty years; another's sight went in four days and only partly returned, and another now sees little from one eye. Many credit one person who listened.

Who it's for

For anyone newly diagnosed with IIH or still waiting to be believed, parents of a child with headaches and sore eyes, and partners learning what an unseen pressure asks of a family.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 279 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.