odd medical question

Frostbite

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Frostbite
Joined
Dec 19, 2001
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Is there any medical condition which causes red eyes for the rest of someone's life? I'm talking about the white of the eye turning red and the iris keeping its color. I'm writing a short story in which a character needs to have red eyes, but it needs to be scientifically explained.

Thanks.
 
Weerrlll....the character could smoke loads of dope all the time :arrow: :D

I did a quick search on webmd, but the only thing I could come up with was conjuctivitis, or "pink eye," which isn't something you'd want to live with forever. Hm.
 
Hmm thanks. That's what I found also. I think I'll take the default explanation: birth mark. :)
 
Ruptured blood vessels in the sclera (white part) would do it.
Usually brought on by high blood pressure that is untreated. I don't know if the condition can be reversed.



Boo
 
Why dont you invent a condition. If I couldnt find the disease I was looking that's what I would do... unless you a striving for realism. Or give your character some kind of red-filtering large contact lens that goes over the entire eye and I dont know what I'm saying...
 
Boo said:
Ruptured blood vessels in the sclera (white part) would do it.
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This would only be temporary - it would clear in about three weeks.

Boo said:
Usually brought on by high blood pressure that is untreated.
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High blood pressure is not the cause of this condition. The vessels usually just rupture spontaneously.

Boo said:
I don't know if the condition can be reversed.
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Yeah, it reverses spontaneously as well.
 
Frostbite said:
Is there any medical condition which causes red eyes for the rest of someone's life?
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The only thing I can think of is allergic conjunctivitis. In the usual form it is seasonal and temporary but there are individuals who have chronic perennial allergic conjunctivitis. There is treatment but sometimes the effect of the treatment is only partial so that a degree of redness would remain. However, the individual would also tend to be itchy, watery eyes. Don't know if that would matter for your character.
 
Permanently yellow eyes would be easier, if he was jaundiced or whatever.

Otherwise, here's a link to some red eye conditions, but I don't think any of those are permanent either, unless you could contrive a plot device to make it so.

Or you could just say he's got a condition called [insert Latin words for "quite red eyes" here - admodum ocular rufus?] Hey, I bet it's what your doctor would do if you had permanently red eyes.
 
Charlie in Dayton said:
Make 'em a wampyr. Red eyes. Problem solved.
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Agree on this 100%.

Vampires are real, everyone knows that. A vampire told me they're real. So they are because a vampire told me. S'there.
 
Just call it "chronic subconjunctival hemorrhage" and say it's due to some kind of bleeding disorder.
 
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