Some days, my eyes are so tired and just hurt. Even if I don't even do my VT homework that day! I can get stereo and sometimes my eyes just lock in on it! And it huts! The prisms in my glasses take care of the vertical alignment, but the horizontal I have to really dial in. Ouch! There have been times over the past week or so when I had a lock on stereopsis when doing close work like working in the kitchen - something that's about 12 - 18" from my eyes. I can see depth and I can actually control the depth by really pulling in my focus. It's like a camera trick where you zoom in and pan out at the same time to give an amplified sense of depth. Other times, my eyes just do their normal thing and alternate and the world is relatively flat.
This has, however, effected my ability to read. I'm getting a fuzzy image up close if I don't fuse the images. I'm OK on the computer because it's far enough out from where I normally get a fusion lock and depth, so my brain is happy suppressing as usual. But book reading distance is different. There was 1 day where I had a really hard time reading my phone or Kindle. I had to really pull in my focus to do it.
My eyes are tired and itchy from my allergies today. They just don't want to cooperate. I tried doing my homework, but was just struggling, so I put it down. I'm finding that my biggest struggle is getting that balance between my eyes to overcome the suppression issues. I can easily get depth at close range but with suppression - I don't see all the parts of the tranaglyphs. I seem to have to concentrate on one aspect or another. I'm not sure which is the most basic that I should really focus on.
And so we plod onward!
Monday, March 26, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
Karma Chameleon
Ah the Brock string. A lovely length of white string with 3 colored beads on it. You tie one end to something and hold the other to your nose with the beads at different distances. Then you look at each bead in turn to induce physiological diplopia or double vision. Yes, we are trying to see double. Um...I thought that was bad...but apparently not if you are trying to do it! It's like those optical illusions you did as a kid - yeah, the ones I never got! But I remember one where you put your fingers together at your nose and you were supposed to see a sausage. No, I could never really see that. I just tried it and I can sort of get it to work!
The idea is that you want to get to where you look at a bead and see 1 bead with the string making an X that crosses at the bead. It trains your eyes to turn both on and make them look at the same object at the same time. Starting with 1 bead, this was not so bad. I can do this. I can even move the bead farther than a couple inches from my nose and hold my gaze. I see the V in front of the bead, but I don't see both strings in back. Drat! Flick the string she says....still nothing! OK, let's just work on the front part and maybe the back will (miraculously) just appear.
I've been working on this for about a month now. I can get a great lock on the bead and move it up to a yard away! Hey, that's progress! I could barely get to a foot when I started. And I had to have a solid background. Now I can turn off the background interference and work just about anywhere. But I still don't see the back cross - I see a Y instead of an X. That's OK, we'll get there I keep telling myself. It's still early in the process. I realize it's a suppression issue. There are times when I lose a chunk out of the front section too. It's always the same section - it's a couple of inches of the right string backing up from the bead. It's what my left eye is seeing....and really good at suppressing.
I have to fight to turn on both eyes and balance the images. This is not normal! But then we knew that - my eyes are not normal. That's why we are doing this! As I'm fighting to balance the images, I imagine Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in there each with a control knob for one eye duking it out trying to outdo the other! The back section missing is the image from my left eye. I know, surprise, surprise! People look at me really funny and confused when I tell them that I can manually switch with eye I'm seeing with. I can switch images and they are different. Somewhere in a past life, I was a chameleon and moving my eyes independently was the key to my survival! Being it was a past life, we how well THAT worked!
One day last week as I was doing my homework, I managed to get the yellow bead out pretty far. I like the yellow bead for some reason. I sit on my bed with the loop on my toe - a very nice bowline if I do say so myself! I decided to try adding another bead. I managed to work the green bead up to my hand that was holding the string and slip it out past my nose. Ooooh, I can see 1 yellow with the cross in the right place and 2 green! Exactly what I'm supposed to see! Ta da! The next trick is to be able to jump between beads. Oh, what the heck - we're on a roll here, let's go for it! So, I jump my gaze (yeah, more like slid my gaze) to the green bead and voila! I have 1 green, my cross in the right place, but I only have 1 yellow! Foiled again! Let's try to go back to the yellow! Nope! Denied! If I scoot the green back to my nose, I can refocus on the yellow and then slide the green back down. Yeah, this is gonna take a while!
How can something so seemingly simplistic bc so difficult? It's a string and a few beads! Ugh.... My goal over the next few weeks is to master 1 of the 2 issues - either turning on that back section of string or being able to jump from 1 bead to another and then back. I'm not convinced these 2 things are not related.
The idea is that you want to get to where you look at a bead and see 1 bead with the string making an X that crosses at the bead. It trains your eyes to turn both on and make them look at the same object at the same time. Starting with 1 bead, this was not so bad. I can do this. I can even move the bead farther than a couple inches from my nose and hold my gaze. I see the V in front of the bead, but I don't see both strings in back. Drat! Flick the string she says....still nothing! OK, let's just work on the front part and maybe the back will (miraculously) just appear.
I've been working on this for about a month now. I can get a great lock on the bead and move it up to a yard away! Hey, that's progress! I could barely get to a foot when I started. And I had to have a solid background. Now I can turn off the background interference and work just about anywhere. But I still don't see the back cross - I see a Y instead of an X. That's OK, we'll get there I keep telling myself. It's still early in the process. I realize it's a suppression issue. There are times when I lose a chunk out of the front section too. It's always the same section - it's a couple of inches of the right string backing up from the bead. It's what my left eye is seeing....and really good at suppressing.
I have to fight to turn on both eyes and balance the images. This is not normal! But then we knew that - my eyes are not normal. That's why we are doing this! As I'm fighting to balance the images, I imagine Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in there each with a control knob for one eye duking it out trying to outdo the other! The back section missing is the image from my left eye. I know, surprise, surprise! People look at me really funny and confused when I tell them that I can manually switch with eye I'm seeing with. I can switch images and they are different. Somewhere in a past life, I was a chameleon and moving my eyes independently was the key to my survival! Being it was a past life, we how well THAT worked!
One day last week as I was doing my homework, I managed to get the yellow bead out pretty far. I like the yellow bead for some reason. I sit on my bed with the loop on my toe - a very nice bowline if I do say so myself! I decided to try adding another bead. I managed to work the green bead up to my hand that was holding the string and slip it out past my nose. Ooooh, I can see 1 yellow with the cross in the right place and 2 green! Exactly what I'm supposed to see! Ta da! The next trick is to be able to jump between beads. Oh, what the heck - we're on a roll here, let's go for it! So, I jump my gaze (yeah, more like slid my gaze) to the green bead and voila! I have 1 green, my cross in the right place, but I only have 1 yellow! Foiled again! Let's try to go back to the yellow! Nope! Denied! If I scoot the green back to my nose, I can refocus on the yellow and then slide the green back down. Yeah, this is gonna take a while!
How can something so seemingly simplistic bc so difficult? It's a string and a few beads! Ugh.... My goal over the next few weeks is to master 1 of the 2 issues - either turning on that back section of string or being able to jump from 1 bead to another and then back. I'm not convinced these 2 things are not related.
Where are we now?
OK, trying to finish up the backstory here, then we can get on to all the "progress" stuff.
When last we left our heroine, she had just gotten the news that she is now a good candidate for VT. Cue band! So, what does that mean...exactly? It mean open up your wallet! Being of that wonderful age where my eyes are presbiopic, I need distance AND reading glasses. But just get bifocals, you say.... Remember that eye that wanders around and turns in?? Yeah, looking through a small section of my lens, not so much. Oh, and my year is not up on my insurance, so I'm not even eligible for 1 pair...yet. Plan is hatched....
So, we do a full refraction and order the close up glasses. I picked a frame with largish lenses to give me the biggest visual field I can. The large amount of prism I need need on the vertical gets split between the 2 lenses. I now look like a bug eyed freak! Great! Good thing I'm not overly self-conscious of my appearance. I can deal w/ this. We'll wait on the distance till my insurance clicks over and then replace the lenses in my current distant glasses.
I pick up my new bug eyes, put them on and immediately, my stomach does flips! I can't see straight! Or rather I can, but I'm not used to it! I start wearing them as much as possible. Since most of the things I do are close up - computer, cooking, reading - we're golden! I start wearing my bug eyes all the time unless I'm driving or having to look far for extended times. I start getting used to seeing this new way. At times, I can tell I'm actually seeing the same things with both eyes and things "sharpen" which is an odd sensation.
Time for my first VT session! Woo hoo! I'm ready! I get there and find I'm working with the tech and not the doc. That's cool...she's a crack up! Here, try this, now this, do this, make your eyes do this. Are you kidding me? Someone has delusions of what my eyes are capable of! Let's back up the trolley! New plan! OK, let's start back a little further....a little more basic. Here's your homework, see you in a couple weeks. It's all good...but this is going to be a looooooong road! I can do this!
Session 2 goes a bit better. We're still working on basics. Brock String with 1 bead, sliding tranaglyphs, and the red green bars over a Hart chart. Let's play with the Quoits Vectorgram. It's polarized glasses and 2 sheets with the picture of a rope circle in a light box. This is cool! I get it to where it's crisp and clear AND I can see it popping out at me. I have depth! Holy eyeball pain Batman! This hurts! But I can take a stick and put it down the middle of the image and see depth! This is wild! OK, now I want to pop my eyeballs out and ice them down please!
Same homework with a jump tranaglyph added. This is so not happening! It's a sheet with red green images and there are circles that should pop. I can see "something" happening on the one that is 3 diopter separation, but the rest just sit there. We'll work on this.... And I still can't get depth with divergence (should look like it's going away). Heh, my eyes do not want to move out not surprisingly since it turns it quite nicely and is happy there.
Next week, session 3 and my eyes are just not cooperating! Ugh! I just can't get the depth coming up and it's frustrating. But it's all good....some days are better than others even with the homework and we keep plugging along. I get 3 weeks worth of homework because we are going on vacay for spring break. But it's almost time for the insurance to click over so I can get my distance lenses. But (there's always a but) the timing is such that if I surrender them and they don't get them back in time, I could be without any distance glasses at all for the trip. That would not be cool! Strings are pulled, heroes are made, and my distance glasses are getting made early! I still have to be without them for a time, but at least there should be plenty of lead time before the trip!
Now we're all caught up on the backstory....good times, goooooood times. On to progress!
When last we left our heroine, she had just gotten the news that she is now a good candidate for VT. Cue band! So, what does that mean...exactly? It mean open up your wallet! Being of that wonderful age where my eyes are presbiopic, I need distance AND reading glasses. But just get bifocals, you say.... Remember that eye that wanders around and turns in?? Yeah, looking through a small section of my lens, not so much. Oh, and my year is not up on my insurance, so I'm not even eligible for 1 pair...yet. Plan is hatched....
So, we do a full refraction and order the close up glasses. I picked a frame with largish lenses to give me the biggest visual field I can. The large amount of prism I need need on the vertical gets split between the 2 lenses. I now look like a bug eyed freak! Great! Good thing I'm not overly self-conscious of my appearance. I can deal w/ this. We'll wait on the distance till my insurance clicks over and then replace the lenses in my current distant glasses.
I pick up my new bug eyes, put them on and immediately, my stomach does flips! I can't see straight! Or rather I can, but I'm not used to it! I start wearing them as much as possible. Since most of the things I do are close up - computer, cooking, reading - we're golden! I start wearing my bug eyes all the time unless I'm driving or having to look far for extended times. I start getting used to seeing this new way. At times, I can tell I'm actually seeing the same things with both eyes and things "sharpen" which is an odd sensation.
Time for my first VT session! Woo hoo! I'm ready! I get there and find I'm working with the tech and not the doc. That's cool...she's a crack up! Here, try this, now this, do this, make your eyes do this. Are you kidding me? Someone has delusions of what my eyes are capable of! Let's back up the trolley! New plan! OK, let's start back a little further....a little more basic. Here's your homework, see you in a couple weeks. It's all good...but this is going to be a looooooong road! I can do this!
Session 2 goes a bit better. We're still working on basics. Brock String with 1 bead, sliding tranaglyphs, and the red green bars over a Hart chart. Let's play with the Quoits Vectorgram. It's polarized glasses and 2 sheets with the picture of a rope circle in a light box. This is cool! I get it to where it's crisp and clear AND I can see it popping out at me. I have depth! Holy eyeball pain Batman! This hurts! But I can take a stick and put it down the middle of the image and see depth! This is wild! OK, now I want to pop my eyeballs out and ice them down please!
Same homework with a jump tranaglyph added. This is so not happening! It's a sheet with red green images and there are circles that should pop. I can see "something" happening on the one that is 3 diopter separation, but the rest just sit there. We'll work on this.... And I still can't get depth with divergence (should look like it's going away). Heh, my eyes do not want to move out not surprisingly since it turns it quite nicely and is happy there.
Next week, session 3 and my eyes are just not cooperating! Ugh! I just can't get the depth coming up and it's frustrating. But it's all good....some days are better than others even with the homework and we keep plugging along. I get 3 weeks worth of homework because we are going on vacay for spring break. But it's almost time for the insurance to click over so I can get my distance lenses. But (there's always a but) the timing is such that if I surrender them and they don't get them back in time, I could be without any distance glasses at all for the trip. That would not be cool! Strings are pulled, heroes are made, and my distance glasses are getting made early! I still have to be without them for a time, but at least there should be plenty of lead time before the trip!
Now we're all caught up on the backstory....good times, goooooood times. On to progress!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
What a long, strange trip it's been....
I think Jerry had the right idea...life is a long, strange trip and you never know where you'll wind up. Well, this whole vision thing has been a life-long, strange trip. One where I thought I knew what road I was on - the one I'd always been on as long as I can remember. I've had corrective lenses since I was 3, my eyes never worked together, patching when I was 8 or 9 didn't really do anything, and surgery "would only be cosmetic". OK, my brain adapted...and adapted fairly well. Hey, I can see - I should be glad that for that. Right?? Sure.
Well, after years of glasses, contacts, different glasses, different contact, bifocals (which don't work very well when your eyes jump around independently), and finally LASIK, I could still see although not as well as I would like. My visual acuity was as good as it was going to get. But I still couldn't see "well" and always struggled. And it seemed to be getting worse which kind of worried me. My left eye was always "dim" and difficult to correct. And seemed to be getting dimmer over the years. The image was always a bit hazy and not crisp like my right eye. But that was OK, since that's the image my brain tossed out anyway. So, no big deal...right?
Then about a year ago at my annual eye exam, the eye doc I've seen for the past 16 years tells me about a woman named Sue Barry and asks me if I've read her book Fixing My Gaze. He tells me she was stereo-blind and using vision therapy gained stereopsis - she could see in 3D! Her story was very similar to mine. And she did this at about the age I was now. Huh?? But I was always told that it was too late - the patching didn't work and surgery to straighten out my eye would only be cosmetic. What? All of a sudden, there was a fork in my comfy road that was exciting and enticing! And I was itching to see what was down there.
I borrowed the book and read it. Researched Sue Barry and her journey to developing stereopsis. Sign me up! I'm ready to go! Then we hit a road block! I was scheduled for an eval by one of the other docs to see if I was a viable candidate for VT (vision therapy). Well, of course I should be - my vision issues were almost exactly the same as Sue Barry's. So much of her book spoke to me. But after grueling tests to see if I was able to fuse the images from both of my eyes together the verdict was "you are not a good candidate." I was crushed. In my mind I was contemplating what wondrous places I wanted to go see after I could see in 3D. Now it looked like I'd have to pass that fork in the road and just continue on the one I'd been on all along. I was happy on that road before...I could be happy on it again. But now I knew there was another road back there that held great wonder that I would never see. It was like opening a wound that I didn't even know I had.
Then there was a "but".....let's have the other doc take a look, maybe she has more ideas. So, back I go for another session of grueling testing with prisms and LED flashlights and red/green glasses and shining lights and polarized glasses. And once again, I have hope. With multiple prisms to shift the images, I could "turn on" all the LED lights on the flashlight with the red/green glasses. But I couldn't make them line up all the time and it was fleeting at best. My eyes didn't want to both turn on at the same time and my brain struggled to fuse the images. And any shift in the prisms and the whole thing fell apart. Again, the verdict was "not a good candidate". I was devastated....and just a little desperate!
The eye doc said that my visual tracking was just not good enough to hold things together to be able to work on fusion. Well, what if we worked on tracking?? I know I have issues with that! I always have. I was always a slow reader since I couldn't easy transition from the end of 1 line to the start of the next. She unenthusiastically agreed to set up VT to work on individual eye tracking. But no promises. I was grasping!
That's what the past year has been about. I had my pink pirate eye patch...Aaaarrrgh! I don't wanna be a pirate! Working with 1 eye at a time - tracing lines, reading charts, jumping around in a grid, doing word searches, counting lines (my own personal hell!), dotting the centers of shapes, duplicating shapes and lines, and all sort of other extremely boring and tedious tasks! Initially, this was all exciting and I could tell my tracking was getting better. I had a new found confidence when driving, especially parking! Reading was easier and less tiring since I could now jump from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. I could see progress. And it was good!
Midway through my scheduled sessions, we did a re-evaluation. Yes, this was the day of reckoning! My eyes learned to track and now I'd be able to get them to stay steady and fuse! And crushed again! It was easier, but I still did not have sufficient range to fit the criteria. It was about this point where I started losing all hope. I still worked on my VT homework, but not with the same vigor and enthusiasm I had at the start. I was not noticing any more difference in my daily life, so didn't really see any additional progress. At the end of the scheduled sessions, we did the re-eval again....and it was the same! I could fuse, but could only get 8 prism diopter till it all went to hell in a handbasket. The minimum criteria to start VT was 10. And that might have been the end of this story....
The doc suggested we evaluate again in a couple months. I could continue to work on the same activities at home. Yeah, I didn't have much hope at this point. I found some computer games that worked on tracking and played them. Occasionally, I'd pull out some of my old homework stuff and work on it. But I really didn't think anything was going to change, so I didn't devote much time or energy to it. Honestly, I tried to put it out of my mind. I didn't want to get my hopes up again only to have them dashed. I was already battered and bruised enough. I didn't think I another round.
I got there for my eval and felt very down. I could tell the doc was very reserved and probably dreading it too. I'm sure she wasn't relishing having to tell me yet again that I "was not a good candidate". We went through the tests - same ol', same ol'. Nothing seemed to be really different except that I could get the fusion a little faster and could hold it a little better....until she told me that I'd gotten 30 diopter of separation! HUH?? I had fusion and I had range! Neither of us could explain the huge jump for a solid 8 all the way to 30, but all of a sudden, VT for fusion and anti-suppression was back in play! I was cautiously reserved....or maybe a little in shock! I hadn't let myself hope and now all of a sudden, I was looking down that mystical road again. Dare I hope? Can I really go down there and see what it wonders it holds?? Will I just hit another road block and have to turn around?? I wasn't sure I could let myself get excited about this only to be crushed again.
So, here we are on a new path and I have no idea where it's going to lead. It's likely going to be a long road and is fraught with potential pitfalls (like induced double vision which would be worse than monovision). And here we go....Truckin'!
Well, after years of glasses, contacts, different glasses, different contact, bifocals (which don't work very well when your eyes jump around independently), and finally LASIK, I could still see although not as well as I would like. My visual acuity was as good as it was going to get. But I still couldn't see "well" and always struggled. And it seemed to be getting worse which kind of worried me. My left eye was always "dim" and difficult to correct. And seemed to be getting dimmer over the years. The image was always a bit hazy and not crisp like my right eye. But that was OK, since that's the image my brain tossed out anyway. So, no big deal...right?
Then about a year ago at my annual eye exam, the eye doc I've seen for the past 16 years tells me about a woman named Sue Barry and asks me if I've read her book Fixing My Gaze. He tells me she was stereo-blind and using vision therapy gained stereopsis - she could see in 3D! Her story was very similar to mine. And she did this at about the age I was now. Huh?? But I was always told that it was too late - the patching didn't work and surgery to straighten out my eye would only be cosmetic. What? All of a sudden, there was a fork in my comfy road that was exciting and enticing! And I was itching to see what was down there.
I borrowed the book and read it. Researched Sue Barry and her journey to developing stereopsis. Sign me up! I'm ready to go! Then we hit a road block! I was scheduled for an eval by one of the other docs to see if I was a viable candidate for VT (vision therapy). Well, of course I should be - my vision issues were almost exactly the same as Sue Barry's. So much of her book spoke to me. But after grueling tests to see if I was able to fuse the images from both of my eyes together the verdict was "you are not a good candidate." I was crushed. In my mind I was contemplating what wondrous places I wanted to go see after I could see in 3D. Now it looked like I'd have to pass that fork in the road and just continue on the one I'd been on all along. I was happy on that road before...I could be happy on it again. But now I knew there was another road back there that held great wonder that I would never see. It was like opening a wound that I didn't even know I had.
Then there was a "but".....let's have the other doc take a look, maybe she has more ideas. So, back I go for another session of grueling testing with prisms and LED flashlights and red/green glasses and shining lights and polarized glasses. And once again, I have hope. With multiple prisms to shift the images, I could "turn on" all the LED lights on the flashlight with the red/green glasses. But I couldn't make them line up all the time and it was fleeting at best. My eyes didn't want to both turn on at the same time and my brain struggled to fuse the images. And any shift in the prisms and the whole thing fell apart. Again, the verdict was "not a good candidate". I was devastated....and just a little desperate!
The eye doc said that my visual tracking was just not good enough to hold things together to be able to work on fusion. Well, what if we worked on tracking?? I know I have issues with that! I always have. I was always a slow reader since I couldn't easy transition from the end of 1 line to the start of the next. She unenthusiastically agreed to set up VT to work on individual eye tracking. But no promises. I was grasping!
That's what the past year has been about. I had my pink pirate eye patch...Aaaarrrgh! I don't wanna be a pirate! Working with 1 eye at a time - tracing lines, reading charts, jumping around in a grid, doing word searches, counting lines (my own personal hell!), dotting the centers of shapes, duplicating shapes and lines, and all sort of other extremely boring and tedious tasks! Initially, this was all exciting and I could tell my tracking was getting better. I had a new found confidence when driving, especially parking! Reading was easier and less tiring since I could now jump from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. I could see progress. And it was good!
Midway through my scheduled sessions, we did a re-evaluation. Yes, this was the day of reckoning! My eyes learned to track and now I'd be able to get them to stay steady and fuse! And crushed again! It was easier, but I still did not have sufficient range to fit the criteria. It was about this point where I started losing all hope. I still worked on my VT homework, but not with the same vigor and enthusiasm I had at the start. I was not noticing any more difference in my daily life, so didn't really see any additional progress. At the end of the scheduled sessions, we did the re-eval again....and it was the same! I could fuse, but could only get 8 prism diopter till it all went to hell in a handbasket. The minimum criteria to start VT was 10. And that might have been the end of this story....
The doc suggested we evaluate again in a couple months. I could continue to work on the same activities at home. Yeah, I didn't have much hope at this point. I found some computer games that worked on tracking and played them. Occasionally, I'd pull out some of my old homework stuff and work on it. But I really didn't think anything was going to change, so I didn't devote much time or energy to it. Honestly, I tried to put it out of my mind. I didn't want to get my hopes up again only to have them dashed. I was already battered and bruised enough. I didn't think I another round.
I got there for my eval and felt very down. I could tell the doc was very reserved and probably dreading it too. I'm sure she wasn't relishing having to tell me yet again that I "was not a good candidate". We went through the tests - same ol', same ol'. Nothing seemed to be really different except that I could get the fusion a little faster and could hold it a little better....until she told me that I'd gotten 30 diopter of separation! HUH?? I had fusion and I had range! Neither of us could explain the huge jump for a solid 8 all the way to 30, but all of a sudden, VT for fusion and anti-suppression was back in play! I was cautiously reserved....or maybe a little in shock! I hadn't let myself hope and now all of a sudden, I was looking down that mystical road again. Dare I hope? Can I really go down there and see what it wonders it holds?? Will I just hit another road block and have to turn around?? I wasn't sure I could let myself get excited about this only to be crushed again.
So, here we are on a new path and I have no idea where it's going to lead. It's likely going to be a long road and is fraught with potential pitfalls (like induced double vision which would be worse than monovision). And here we go....Truckin'!
Flat Gidget
Flat Stanleys...you know, those traveling paperdoll cutouts that you send on trips you can't go on?? Someone else takes it with them on a great vacation, takes pictures and journals where Stanley went and what he saw. When he comes back, you get a glimpse of the places, but it's not like being there and seeing it in all it's glory. All my life has been flat....maybe I'm Flat Gidget!
Not that I'm flat, but what I see is flat. You see, my eyes don't work together. My eye doc records are filled with terms like strabismus, amblyopia, alternating hyper estoropia, and stero-blind. All those fancy terms to say that my left eye floats up and turns in and that my brain mostly suppresses the image that it sends. I can pick which eye I'm looking with, but I mainly see with my stronger right eye. What that means is that my brain doesn't have 2 images that it can fuse to create a 3-dimensional picture. One image gets suppressed - generally, the one from the eye I'm not looking with. I see flat. I can't see the space between object - I know it's there because I've learned to compensate in many ways. I don't need lights on at night in a familiar place because I can feel my way around. I instinctively know how far to walk down the hallway before I get to the door. But I can't "see" the space. I can't tell how much there is. I imagine it's similar to what a "normal" sighted person sees looking a photograph. That's what I see - I have 1 aperture that brings in visual information.
Why does all this matter?? I've survived all these years and adapted pretty well. Why would I want to change that?? Well, flat can be really scary! I'm terrified every time I have to park my car or pull into the garage. Will this be the time I misjudge and scrape the side?? Will I scrape my mirror on the garage....again? 3D movies make me sick to my stomach because I just can't process all that input and make it fuse in my brain. Any sport that involves a fast moving object hurtling through space at me is a disaster! Swing and a miss! Honestly, most times I just duck and cover! I want to see in 3D! Just like everyone else!
So, this blog is my story of trying to make that happen. I'm already almost a year into this and farther than anyone thought I could progress. But, we aren't there yet! One day, I hope I'll be able to look at a tree and see the space between the leaves. Or look up at a skyscraper and marvel at how tall it is. So grab yourself the beverage of your choice and follow my journey through (and of) my eyes.
Not that I'm flat, but what I see is flat. You see, my eyes don't work together. My eye doc records are filled with terms like strabismus, amblyopia, alternating hyper estoropia, and stero-blind. All those fancy terms to say that my left eye floats up and turns in and that my brain mostly suppresses the image that it sends. I can pick which eye I'm looking with, but I mainly see with my stronger right eye. What that means is that my brain doesn't have 2 images that it can fuse to create a 3-dimensional picture. One image gets suppressed - generally, the one from the eye I'm not looking with. I see flat. I can't see the space between object - I know it's there because I've learned to compensate in many ways. I don't need lights on at night in a familiar place because I can feel my way around. I instinctively know how far to walk down the hallway before I get to the door. But I can't "see" the space. I can't tell how much there is. I imagine it's similar to what a "normal" sighted person sees looking a photograph. That's what I see - I have 1 aperture that brings in visual information.
Why does all this matter?? I've survived all these years and adapted pretty well. Why would I want to change that?? Well, flat can be really scary! I'm terrified every time I have to park my car or pull into the garage. Will this be the time I misjudge and scrape the side?? Will I scrape my mirror on the garage....again? 3D movies make me sick to my stomach because I just can't process all that input and make it fuse in my brain. Any sport that involves a fast moving object hurtling through space at me is a disaster! Swing and a miss! Honestly, most times I just duck and cover! I want to see in 3D! Just like everyone else!
So, this blog is my story of trying to make that happen. I'm already almost a year into this and farther than anyone thought I could progress. But, we aren't there yet! One day, I hope I'll be able to look at a tree and see the space between the leaves. Or look up at a skyscraper and marvel at how tall it is. So grab yourself the beverage of your choice and follow my journey through (and of) my eyes.
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