Saturday, May 3, 2014

You want more evidence? I'll give you some evidence right here.

“Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor of his own brain” - Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934)

Ever since I was four years old I've been cross-eyed (accommodative esotropia). My brain learned to suppress the image of one eye by turning the eye inwards. Over the years my visual situation changed and expensive mistakes were made. If you want to read the entire story click here. After the last surgery I had very little control over my eyes and they tended towards exotropia although that highly depended on the viewing direction. Bottom line: constant double vision, restrictions in gaze and considerable convergence insufficiency. An esotropic brain in an exotropic-ish body isn't easy. Not workable, not livable, not good, ...

Here's a video I made on December 5th, 2011 showing how hard it was to converge my eyes. Not being able to merely converge while putting your full attention to the task is clearly going to ruin your every day vision, reading ability, energy levels and performance. How the hell did I graduate like this? At this point I was already in VT for a year and had already somewhat improved compared to my initial post-surgical starting position.


The second video was recorded on the 3rd of May, 2014. It's still pretty hard to converge but there has been huge improvement as you can see. In another year'll converge like it's nothing. The year after that even better!


This is three years and four months into VT. It is still all hands on deck to finish the job but progress is obvious. My brain is changing and my eye muscles are recovering and stretching. The better I see, the safer I feel. The safer I feel, the better I see.

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4 comments:

  1. This is great progress Michael. Thanks for sharing and keep it up (both the VT and the sharing!)

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  2. Michael, this is such an encouraging blog. For someone that is just starring, it is a little overwhelming though. Any chance you could do a post that starts with an overview with excercises (and potentially goals) for people just starting?

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  3. Hey Corey! No two strabismus cases are the same, just like no two brains are the same but there are parallels. The first goal for me was simply to get my eyes aligned. Might require a lot of monocular work and then binocular work but most of all patience and persistence!

    Have you read 'fixing my gaze'? Sure do! That's how it all got started for me. Also available in audio.

    I tried to categorize all possibly useful exercises under the section 'strabismus + practical VT exercises'. I would suggest you join our FB group called 'DIY Vision Therapy'. A lot of people out there cracking this nut so it's better to join forces.

    For professional help look for a professional on the covd.org.

    Hope this comment sort of answers your concerns :)

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