Thursday, September 25, 2008

McCain's Left Eye

I'm not the only one who's noticed that there's something up with McCain's left eyelid. People are speculating the droop is caused by a brain tumor related to the melanomas. (I guess melanomas on the head can lead to brain tumors.)

Update: a detailed comment from opthhomd on HuffPo about this: Having seen McCain's face on TV numerous times in the past few months I was struck by something different in his appearance during his speech announcing his campaign suspension yesterday. It was the marked asymmetry of his eyes. The appearance of the droopiness (ptosis) of his left upper eyelid was accentuated by the retraction of his right upper eyelid (the entire iris showed and maybe some superior limbus). This is a compensatory mechanism in unilateral ptosis. It's Herring's law of equal innervation. He's also seemed to be trying to use his brows to elevate his upper lids, revealing some brow ptosis on the left side. A history and physical would be useful in making a diagnosis but without that one can only speculate.....like that the upper division of the seventh cranial nerve is weakened possibly from extension of the melanoma into the superior peripheral branches of the nerve as it travels by the area of tumor resection/reconstruction.

5 comments:

Scooter said...

Looks droopy to me. Probably the result of Hanoi Hilton beatings.

Stephanie said...

Nope. Not droopy in earlier pics. Started in early Sept.

Scooter said...

I've got to work on my sarcasm.

Anonymous said...

Urgent! McCain has just confirmed health problems. But he did not specify whether or not to continue the fight for the presidency.
Interview: http://tubedirect.net/index.php?q=McCain-health-interview-CNN
What would the Republicans??

Michael said...

Your post is listed on this "Ptosis Diagnosis" site run by Stanford under "blog articles"

http://stanford.wellsphere.com/wellmix360/ptosis-diagnosis