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'!
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