Then there were two

A little while ago an American woman by the name of Heather Essex Thomas found out about this blog and we have been in touch. She is in her fourties and her last operation was 5 years ago. After the operation she experienced double vision for only a few days and went back to suppressing the second image. So contrary to my own case her suppressing system seems to be intact. She has been doing vision therapy for a few weeks now. Her progress seems swift. The changes have various effects on her like dizziness and car sickness, along with the sensation she is perceiving colours as being more vivid.

More recently she wrote me:
"I am starting to get flickers of double vision which my therapist says is a sign that my eyes are starting to work together. But I am so tired most of the time. I haveread this happens because I am seeing so much more of the world. Have you experienced the tiredness?" |understatement :)|
I was at a baseball game Saturday night. At the end of the game there was a fireworks display. That was pretty cool. I have seen fireworks many times but never like this before.
I also feel like there is often a "fight" between my eyes in regards to which eye wants to be dominate. Did this happen to you?" |They should become a team eventually|

I'm very happy someone is writing me about her experience. I experienced all of that to a devestating extend , except for the positive aspects she is describing. I made it worse by not being informed correctly, faulty operations and obsessing about getting that degree... Later I found out about this whole other world of possibilities called optometry. I read up on all the things that have been happening during the last 18 years and the things that are about to happen to me. In the picture a summary of the symptoms is shown, especially the general fatigue has been playing a prominent role lately. The good news is that all the symptoms will go away over time. The bad news is changing at such a fundamental level under the pressure of double vision requires a lot of energy so there will be more up and downs getting out of this dead lock. Anyhoe, it's gonna be okay in the end :)

How to rehabilitate a lazy eye while promoting binocularity?

According to my research traditional amblyopia treatment (patching the dominant eye) is not beneficial for eye teaming and what it might do for the acuity in a lazy eye it will destroy on the binocular front. Moreover, improvements in acuity will often only be of a temporary nature and be lost once patching treatment is stopped because the visual system will go back to its old ways and mostly ignore that particular eye's input. Patching is as ineffective as it is impractical.

So what's to be done? 
If you want to promote integrating the amblyopic  eye into the visual system, you have to use it while putting the dominant eye in a disadvantage BUT NOT FULLY OCCLUDING IT. This in combination with other exercise will promote eye coordination because both eyes are opened. Allowing light to enter both eyes is very important.

More advanced techniques of treating amblyopia allow patients, especially children, to have faster and better results with little or no eye patching. One technique illustrated below called 'piercing a straw' works on eye-hand coordination while using various prism glasses. This is only one of many techniques based on the latest neuroscience that could be used to integrate a lazy eye into the visual system with minimal patching. 



Source: Wow vision therapy - Dr Fortenbacher

Once someone understands the underlying principles of the visual system and binocular vision the possibilities of practicing those are endless. Amblyopia is caused by a disruption in binocular vision in infancy and/or early toddlerhood. The latest research shows that the brain of an amblyopic person functions as though  they are only a "one-eyed" person. The goal is to properly integrate the inferior eye in the visual system of the brain and with a tad of creativity necessity can be combined with pleasure.  



This video is produced by Dr. Fortenbacher and his Wow Vision Therapy practice. Check him out on www.wowvision.net or http://www.facebook.com/wowvisiontherapy. He does an excellent job explaining his work in an accessible fashion.

A while later another video was published on the Wow Vision Therapy facebook page showing the same little girl experience 3D vision for the very first time in her life. It's just awesome. At session 17, Caroline's treatment has effectively "removed the brakes from her strabismic flat vision". Office-based optometric vision therapy has stimulated the development of her visual brain enough to enable her to experience "stereopsis" for the first time in her life in a 3-D movie. Prior to her treatment, Caroline came to us with a unilateral strabismus, right esotropia and amblyopia. She suppressed her right eye and was stereo blind. While vision therapy is not simply about looking at 3-D movies, this example is showing how Caroline is able to transfer her developing binocular vision ability into seeing the depth in a 3-D movie. Therefore, Caroline is enjoying seeing images popping off the screen of a 3-D movie as the reward of having binocular vision.




Since possibilities are infinite, I came up with my own modest way of stimulating my inferior eye. Every so often I put a RYSER FILTER on my glasses blurring my dominant right eye and consequently forcing my inferior eye in a more prominent position. Although my inferior eye is also quite good, otherwise I wouldn't be having double vision, applying the filter on my glasses feels kind of funny. It's a lot more tiring to function this way, so even though I have double vision the right eye still mostly runs the bingo. Doing this I try to insert some balance into my visual brain and produce equitable binocular vision over time. I only do this for a limited amount of time because it is just too exhausting after a while and forcing doesn't help. Vision therapy takes time and patience, especially with adults.

More info on monocular fixation in a binocular field:
- http://visionhelp.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/advanced-amblyopia-treatment-for-faster-and-better-outcomes/
- http://www.mainosmemos.com/2013/12/what-is-lazy-eye.html
- https://pinterest.com/caprockeyedoc/monocular-fixation-in-a-binocular-field-activities/
- http://strabby.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/my-new-bff-mfbf-15/
- http://www.acbo.org.au/news-views/articles/171