Lady of the Flies: Seeing in more detail

Victories in adult strabismic vision therapy sound bizarre to those with normal vision. But I know I can share this here and get some nods of “Yes, that’s happened to me” or at least some laughs.

In September, I reported on my newfound appreciation of the visual details of mildew. Yes, that annoying black stuff that grown in your shower/bath that you want to get rid of. I was able to see it in better definition without my glasses or contacts.

Lately, I’ve noticed swarms of flies when I go hiking or for a walk in a park or creekside area. Last week, I felt like I was amidst a locust storm, similar to the one I saw in the movie Nowhere in Africa. (I looked for this specific scene on You Tube and I couldn’t find it. This German movie won the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award in 2002. It shows the true story of a German Jewish family who escaped the Holocaust by going to Kenya during World War II and one of their many challenges in Africa was dealing with the locusts.)

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, California

Back to my eyes,  I must be seeing better if I can perceive these light-colored flies in the air. Three weeks ago, I was in San Francisco on an incredibly sunny day and was frozen looking at flies near a garbage can. Many tourists came to delight in the Palace of Fine Arts, from the 1915 Pan American Fair. I was enraptured with the flies by the garbage can. The Palace of Fine Arts is my favorite place in San Francisco but it couldn’t seduce me away from the flies. As they say in Spanish, “cada loco su tema” (every crazy person has his or her topic/issue). I’ve gone from mildew to flies. What’s next? Staring at my compost container to see the orange peels and apple cores pop out?

I went back to a particular creekside trail near where I used to live just to find my flies and stare at them. I used to walk that trail many times so I know that the flies haven’t recently moved in. They’ve always been there but I had never seen so well to make out their profiles amidst the light.

It’s hard to transmit my delight in seeing flies to my friends and family. I sound like I’m on drugs or am delirious or both. That’s why I go alone to the creek to look at the flies.

Does anyone else find pleasure in these fine details of life? Maybe mildew doesn’t rock your world. Maybe it’s the dust on your table that you now see better and know that you need to clean.

Tips for strabismic adults doing binocular vision therapy to see in 3D

I am almost two years into vision therapy (VT) and have various suggestions to share with those who are considering traveling the road to 3D vision or have recently begun.

Although I am no poster child for VT and have struggled greatly with its side effects, I am writing this to help others avoid the pitfalls that caused me much psychological pain in the past two years. I wish I’d known these tips before I began. Consider this as my gift during the holiday season.

1. Give up control of your life

No, I am not a Buddhist teacher or New Age spiritual leader, I am speaking from the heart. The sooner you give up controlling your life, the easier it will be to accommodate the neural changes your brain is going through. The more you fight all the side effects (headaches, fatigue, double vision, confusion, over sensitivity to sound, mood swings, etc), the harder you make it for your brain to change.

If you’re a control freak or even a closeted (hidden) one, deal with your control issues BEFORE you go to VT. I always considered myself a fairly flexible person as I’ve traveled and lived in many places where going with the flow was the only way to keep one’s sanity, but life in VT has made me realize how much control and order I really like in my life.

After nine days in VT, I was starting to feel the psychological and physical effects of the therapy. I was exhausted and I could tell that I was trying to see a bookshelf in a bookstore in double after leaving the optometrist’s office. My evening plans to meet friends for a Korean dinner got quickly canceled. My friend offered to drive me home because I was so confused. After that day, I often cancelled plans at the last minute because I suddenly felt tired or couldn’t deal to be around noise, lights and people. Two years into VT, and I still cancel events because of my eyes and brain.

Again, this point can not be overstated enough. When I finally surrendered myself to VT and said I’d find a way to manage the side effects and stop trying to lead my life the way I did before VT, the easier it was.

If you’re not ready to modify your pace of life and how you socialize, then you are not ready for VT and to see anew.

Keep in mind, I’ve had two operations to surgically straighten my eyes, so I am fighting against surgeries so my complications may be less severe than those who haven’t been under the knife. But from what I’ve read online from other adults in VT, my symptoms are shared amongst others.

2. Be prepared with food, caffeine, whatever you need to make it through a VT session



A VT session is making you change the way your brain has always worked. It’s not a quick haircut. Don’t pack you day with activities and think you can go to VT after work and then go grocery shopping, do errands, see friends, take a class, etc. You may be absolutely exhausted or mentally confused after your session, so much so that you may need to walk to the nearest cafe and get a coffee or other caffeinated or sweet drink to keep you functional. I am not exaggerating. My doctor’s office being next to a Starbucks was probably not planned on the doctor’s part but was of great utility to me. Incidentally, I started VT on my birthday and one of my friends gave me a Starbucks gift card on my birthday that quickly got used up as I needed caffeine to keep me awake for VT and after.

3. Seek support and love, not understanding

That’s right. Explaining to your friends and family that you can’t see in 2D and have somehow not killed yourself while stepping down from the sidewalk and how you want to see in 3D by wearing red-green glasses and staring at a string with colored beads may only make you feel more isolated. Trust me. I’ve explained in every way I can possibly imagine what I’m doing and people still don’t get it. While going through such profound neural changes as I have been, my natural instinct is to communicate what I see and how I feel, but few people are good recipients of this information. Sad, but true.

Even my own parents don’t seem to fathom that I’m partially blind. I can’t explain what 2D is to a person who has seen in 3D their whole lives. And boy, have I tried.

My Dad finally just told me not to ask people to understand what I am going through because few will take the time and effort to truly empathize with another and put themselves in that person’s shoes. 

Doing VT as an adult is already an experience that makes you feel alone, especially when you’re the only adult in the doctor’s office and the kids are having an easy time looking at vectograms and jumping on the trampoline that you’re too tall to jump on. The attempt to explain it all to a friend or family member may make you feel even more alone.

Choose wisely who you open up to about what VT is and how you see.

In my experience, the people who most understood my mental challenges were my friends who were former alcoholics as they too, had to rewire their brains, to avoid drinking.

When I tell people that I sometimes see them with three eyes or two noses or with their second head by their waist, they either laugh or have blank faces. They can’t fathom how I make it through life. (Luckily, my diplopia is lessened now unless I focus on something.)

Ask you friends for support and love, don’t burden them with the details of clown vectograms, Brock string exercises and prisms, unless you know that they will do their best to understand you. If you have kids or are around kids, they’ll love seeing double through the prisms.



4. VT is like having your brain on crutches that nobody can see



Vision therapy is like physical therapy, except it’s for your brain and eyes. But the crutches are not visible. Remember that.

You may look normal and nobody can tell you are undergoing major brain restructuring, but you are. Never forget that you’re not the same person you were before you boarded the train the stereo-land. 

I have to remind myself that although I want to do X activity, I need to be careful, bring someone with me in case something happens or leave early so I won’t get tired. I’ve gone from being a free spirit to being super cautious.

I am a travel writer who forgot my password for my online frequent flyer mile account but I know my library card number easily because I often order travel related books online to travel vicariously at home.

5. Have a backup plan



If you have to drive far to get to your VT session, keep in mind that you may be tired and you may not feel safe driving home. Find a friend’s office or home where you can stay to relax or sleep. Take a nap in your car and then get some food or drink before driving home. I was lucky to find a doctor who was not far from where I worked and lived. But even so, I always knew I could walk to my sister’s office or take the bus home if I felt uncomfortable.



6. Put some fun in your exercises

Staring at quoit vectograms with red-green glasses can get old and boring real fast. As I have a computer-based exercise now, I do it while playing The Daily Show or the Colbert Report on the Internet in the background so I can listen to comics while training my eyes. Play music that isn’t too distracting.

Please feel free to add your tips from your experience.

If our brain is a neural Parliament then no wonder my brain on vision therapy is so confused!

I just saw this interview that Stephen Colbert did of neuroscientist David Eagleman on the Colbert Report.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman likens the brain to a neural Parliament with different political parties that are battling it out to steer the ship of state.

If a normal brain, pre-vision therapy, is already arguing like parliamentarians, then it’s no wonder than those of us in vision therapy to develop binocular vision experience many moments of confusion. All those political parties are in mayhem as our brain is rewiring!

You have to click on the blue media player text (http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:392756) to play the video.

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
David Eagleman
www.colbertnation.com
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:392756
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Ascension from emotional paralysis

As the words of my 11th opinion sunk in, I realized that no one knows when I’ll be done with this and when I will get over my horror fusionis, develop central fusion and be on my merry way. The original thought was that my therapy would be done in a year. It’s been a year and nine months with a six week break during the summer of 2010.

I can’t continue delaying what I want to do in my life because of the side effects of binocular vision therapy. Part of my frustration with VT stems from the fact that my deficiency in concentration and sensitivity to noise and input has made me reduce or eliminate travel, reduce social activities, not go out dancing, and not pursue other professional pursuits. I figured I should give my brain a break and just wait until the therapy was over to do something new or participate in activities like travel and dancing that require a lot of patience, concentration, hand-eye coordination and ability to be around lots of visual and auditory input.

I have several projects related to promoting foreign language learning, publishing and a political activism that I will cease to leave on the back burner. I will find ways to realize my dreams despite my limitations mentally and physically.

Once I came to this realization, things around me changed. I quickly found two people with whom to collaborate on making some videos on You Tube to promote foreign language learning. A few days after my 11th second opinion, I was making a video in San Francisco about learning languages without leaving the country. The following week, a saxophonist I know who had been inviting me for months to his salsa concerts, finally got me to go to dance. I had never danced so well in my life.

My vision also changed. I could see better even with my glasses off. Cars and people in motion moved more smoothly, as though they were in slow motion. Objects appeared to be sharper.

My energy came back. I didn’t feel as lethargic. I also had fewer instances of confusing languages.

The ophthalmologist saw me after one year and told me that my eyes were straighter than before. While waiting for my appointment, I noticed the carpet in the waiting room and how the lighter colored patterns in the carpet were raised above the darker ones. I got on my hands and knees to sit on the floor to closely examine the carpet to make sure that in face the light colored patterns were not on the same level as the rest of the carpet. You know you are in binocular vision therapy when you have a newfound interest in waiting room carpets and you get into a crawling position to confirm your new visual perceptions!

I’ve been feeling much, much better.

Changing my inner perception of life and getting out of “being stuck” literally changed my vision. You could also posit that my visual changes were already in the works and their manifestation just happened to coincide with my mental re-direction.

Emotional paralysis

I have been barely writing for over a month because I had an optometrist visit that sent me into several weeks of emotional paralysis.

After much deliberation, I decided to go for yet another second opinion. I counted how many health professionals I’ve consulted about my vision therapy, strabismus and side effects since commencing VT in January 2010 and I counted 12. Yes, twelve. Two developmental optometrists, three ophthalmologists, two neurologists, one neuro-ophthalmologist, one psychologist, one acupuncturist, one homeopath, and one Ayurvedic doctor. So when friends and family told me to get a second opinion, I laughed. Oh, I’ve already had many second opinions, ten of them. Most of the medical professionals had never ever seen a case like mine. Bad start. Being an enigma in medicine sucks. There’s no better way to say it. I even had a couple sessions with a hypnotherapist thinking that she could help me in case I had some medical block to

Below is what I wrote to a friend after the visit for my 11th second opinion.

I visited another developmental optometrist who collaborates with my current optometrist and whose office is located near his. The appointment was not good. Basically, I’m a very tough case. (As though I didn’t already know this…) But she doesn’t think I am hopeless and doesn’t think I should give up vision therapy. However, she’s not sure what I can achieve if I switch to her. She had one patient similar to me and that patient worked w/her for a couple of years and never developed central fusion. The patient then moved away and the doctor doesn’t know if she ever got full stereopsis. (I have peripheral fusion and that’s why I am fascinated by trees when I am in a moving vehicle because I see them come towards me and envelop me in a canopy above.) I wasn’t totally heartbroken but I got what I expected. When I spoke to the doctor by phone, she said she could tell my case would be a hard one. When I left the office, I was tearing and thought to myself, half in jest, “I need divine intervention.” I went to the Palestinian green grocer across the street from the eye doctor, bought some foods and then went for a walk at the Los Gatos Creek Trail.

The call for divine intervention ceased being partially a joke to being real. I see no compelling reason to switch eye doctors but I also am not totally motivated to do my exercises everyday and often have to force myself to do them, like a kid who doesn’t want to do his/her piano practice. I can’t take any more medical opinions. I need a solution. So far, the only person who thinks I can get to full stereopsis with central fusion is my current optometrist. I need an act of whatever divinity or inner force I can find to show me the path to getting my brain to work in 3D. I’ve never been a religious person. But I seriously have done all that I can do as a patient and something else is going to have to lead me.

When I asked the doctor about my side effects, she said none of them surprised her. She said my verbal confusion resembles that of her brain injury patients who are much worse off than I am. But she had no words of wisdom for how I can keep my languages straight and at least speak English without pausing and mixing up my syntax.

Wonders of VT remind me of a Sex in the City episode

I never imagine invoking HBO’s popular series, Sex and the City, in a post about binocular vision therapy. But, alas, I am.

The communication gap that exists between those of us on the road to 3D and those who take 3D for granted is vast, and as I have painstakingly have realized, insurmountable for most people I talk to on the other side.

This reminds me of the “A Woman’s Right to Shoes” episode where Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) laments that as a single woman without children, she never gets any gifts or cards to celebrate moments in her life, unlike her married friends with kids who get bridal shower, wedding and baby shower presents. “You don’t get a Hallmark card that says, ‘Congratulations for not marrying the wrong man’ “. (The only You Tube clip I could find had some expletive words in the dialogue that may be shunned on this site so I prefer not to post. But you can find the episode online broken up into three parts. It consists of Bradshaw’s Manolo Blahnik shoes being stolen.)

There are no parties, Hallmark cards, or generally recognized moments of congratulations for when we stare at toilet paper because we suddenly find the texture interesting. There are no “let’s admire flying dust particles in the sunlight” summer barbecues.  How about a hike for vision therapy patients who will spend more time staring at trees and rocking back and forth underneath trees like Rabbis at the Wailing Wall, except we’ll have our heads pointing upwards instead of in books. Or the “now I know why people get Botox. I can see more wrinkles on people’s faces” aha moment!

I am not bitter or self pitying when I write this. I am simply expressing how my daily “wonders” and hidden delights of staring at walls or riding the bus alone to look at moving trees makes it difficult for me to connect with people around me not doing VT because they can’t understand my world.

Recently, a friend asked me for help booking her a ticket to Naples, Italy to visit her new amore italiano. She told me about the Napolitan chef and I saw his photos of Facebook. I wanted to share what was exciting about my life, that I can now see better in the shower without my glasses and that I can see things sharper. But how can “I see mildew in the shower clearer than ever” compare with “gorgeous love Italian-style”? It can’t. So I kept my mildew to myself.

In March 2011, I wrote an invitation to a party in verse. The party is for my “graduation from VT”. I hoped I could do it this summer so I set the invitation in the rose garden in San Jose, California. I do want to celebrate once I am finally done and in stereo but I wonder if I can truly rejoice with others over something they can’t fathom. The party may consist of just me staring at roses. I’ll skip the shower mildew:)

Advantages of doing vision therapy: knowing when fall is coming from the trees

One of the advantages of spending so much time staring at trees as that I am acutely aware of the seasons and the early autumn leaves. Even before our turn to fall, I noticed autumnal hues of orange and red on trees. I mentioned this last week to a friend  who lives in foggy San Francisco, commutes on a tree-less highway and works in an office. She had no idea that the trees were already showing signs of change. Evidently, she doesn’t spend much time admiring arboreal beauty. I, in my road to 3D, spend a lot of time starting at trees, especially when I am in a moving vehicle, preferably not one I am driving.

How to keep motivation when progress is extremely slow

I’m jealous to read about other adult strabismics going into stereo. I’ve been doing VT for a year and eight months and I am not in stereo.

For those of you who are like me and moving at a snail’s pace, how do you keep your motivation going and do your exercises? I sometimes have to force myself to do my exercises.

Now that I am doing some Berrnell VT video exercise where I use a Berrnell-0-Scope to look at 3D images of a moving concoction on my computer screen, I play The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or an audiobook on my computer to keep me entertained. Watching a moving object on my computer is better than staring at vectograms of clowns, but it doesn’t captivate me in the slightest.

(Video program of moving concoctions.)  (Bernell-o-Scope)

Any idea on how to motivate oneself to be excited about vision therapy when your progress is slow?

Explaining VT and strabismus to others. An impossible task?

I think I’ve written about this before. But I thought I remark on my new strategy that two friends helped me come up with to avoid explaining what VT is, what it means to only see flat and why my vision therapy is slowing down my life because of all of the side effects.

My new way of deflecting too many questions (“What you can’t see in 3D? How are you still alive? Is this safe? You stare at brocolli because you think it looks cool? blah blah blah) is to tell people that I am dealing with a complex medical situation which I care not to discuss. But let it be known that it is slowing me down in most aspects of my life. Period. I realized that I was getting aggravated answering questions from people who usually had no idea what they were talking about or couldn’t remember what I had previously told them.

How do other people deflect unwanted questions? As I’ve been doing this for more than a year and a half and have experienced many side effects (fatigue, language confusion, intermittent diplopia, inability to concentrate, etc), I want to tell people what is going on so that they’ll understand why my professional and social lives have been slow for a while. But explaining just takes away too much energy.

Driving is like a video game, 2D driving

Driving is like in a video game without the oncoming animation

Two weeks ago, I was driving to San Francisco on Highway 280 and I felt good about how I felt in relation to the road. I usually hate driving but Highway 280 is pastoral and usually pleasant. But I hadn’t been on it for a while and it felt different. I was acutely aware of the road coming towards me and moving beneath my vehicle, like the images in video games. I don’t play video games, but I’ve seen enough race car tracks on video game terminals to make the analogy.

What else is it that you can perceive with stereopsis that seems similar to video games?
If anyone has any images or videos to upload to explain, please do so.