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 :)

Being sick

When you are really sick for a very long time most people will get fed up and walk away if it starts affecting their lives too much as well. You will get fed up even more, but the problem is you don't get to walk away...

"You can control your vision and you are learning how to take control"

Vision therapy requires a big conscious effort over a considerable period of time. Anyone doing it should be a 100% commited.

Session 34

Extending fusion and accommodation exercises in terms of distance, speed and flexibility. General energy levels are picking up and I try to take care of my eye movements ALL THE TIME. I don't stress about anything else and try to take quality of eye movement over quantity. Little things are changing without me noticing... Feeling more comfortable doing some things, being less defensive although I am still very cautious about not overdoing things. The only things I need to put in this mix is time and effort...

Session 33

Fusing bigger objects from a wider distance. Some other regular exercises, one of which walking over the rail with the different kinds of prism glasses. Again the effect of this exercise was greater on me: I got very dizzy and if it weren't for the familiar environment I would get very scared. This kind of anxiety haunted me a lot the past few months because it makes you feel so helpless in an unstable world. It means however my eyes are being used more for balancing which is good. I'll just have to go through this transition phase :)

Get emotional

Don't inhibit your emotional responses. Inhibiting your emotional response to stimuli also lowers the value and bodily resources poured into ones response to the stimulus. In short, get emotional

Strabismus is less a problem to be cured than a problem to be controlled

Surgery's lack of success in achieving good binocularity and the troubling trend of repeated surgeries and recurrance of the strabismus has predicably lead surgeons to have low expectations of the the results of strabismus surgery. In a recent journal article, one surgeon noted that "strabismus is less a problem to be cured than a problem to be controlled, with the minimum number of surgeries": Simon, John W. Complications of strabismus Surgery. Current Opinion in Ophthalmology. 2010. 21: 361-366.

More on: http://www.visiontherapy.ca/strabismustreatment.html