One of the strategies that I've been implementing in my vision therapy journey is to interview people who are having/have had success with vision therapy and figure out what they did.
Heather is one of those who had success with vision therapy. She is now able to see hidden auto-stereograms, which is the ultimate test for stereo function.
Basically her story is that she was stereoblind for all her life. However, interestingly, she never had double vision. She's now 48-ish, I believe. She read Susan Barry's book Fixing My Gaze, and decided to get a vision therapist. So far, her story is very normal. She got one, and after four months she realized that the vision therapist really didn't know what she was doing. I get the impression that Heather is a seriously smart cookie. I sort of had the idea that my vision therapist didn't know either, but I didn't know what to do, because any other vision therapist would be insanely expensive and it might not work.
Heather did something different. Heather ended up talking with one of her doctors who suggested that she get a vision therapist who has expertise with adult strabismus, so that's what she did. She noticed the difference between therapists immediately, and she had very quick success. They gave her contact lenses so that she would be more easily able to fuse because they cover the periphery better than glasses. They had her do a large number of regular vision therapy exercises, like antisuppression, and lots of motion tracking.
But she said what made the most difference was something called sensory training, which, as should put it, supercharges the brain and allows it to change at a much quicker rate. It's a machine you lay down on. You wear headphones that play a certain kind of music, and you stare up at projected lights that move around that you try to track.
She said this made a big difference. After ten sessions of that ($3,000), she went home and she started doing sessions with a light tube which she looked at with magenta filters. After about ten sessions of working with the light tube, she had stereoscopic vision. She said that going to the grocery store was extremely overwhelming because there were so many things floating around. She said that there were certain exercises that were very uncomfortable because they showed too much space. She also mentioned looking at trees, which is what you hear people who gain stereopsis later in life talk about a lot. She said that these things are no longer overwhelming and she can deal with it fine now. She says it's a very different way of seeing. Awesome.
What's interesting about her to me is that stereoscopic vision never 'popped in', as you often hear in stories like this. Her stereo vision just got better and better, gradually, albeit, quicker at some times than others. Another thing that was interesting to me is that she said that the best part of fixing her vision was the social aspect. She said that it's now much easier to talk and interact with people because there's less confusion as to what she's looking at. She said that before people would get confused with which eye they should look at, and as a result they would look away. But that no longer happens. That was the main perk. The vastly improved vision was just the icing on the cake.
Aside from learning about how things worked from her, there was another important takeaway from all of this. Gaining stereoscopic vision is often not a straightforward task and vision therapists are not equally skilled or experienced. In fact, a good number of them are surprisingly clueless. I do believe that it is insidious for a lot of them to market themselves as professionals who are able to fix this kind of condition when they really don't know what they're doing. It is insidious for a number of reasons. It's insidious first of all, because they're taking advantage of people who are vulnerable and often desperate. Yes, I believe I can fix you. I know what I'm doing. It's insidious secondly because vision therapists are expensive. It cost me $7,000 for an inexpensive vision therapist for about one year. It's insidious thirdly because it's time consuming and emotionally draining.
I had this conversation with quite a few of the people I've met who have strabismus, and they second these sentiments. It really is a terrible thing for hapless folk to fall victim to. How does one know whether they have the right vision therapist? I had the right idea what I asked my vision therapist for the first time whether she had experience/success stories in dealing with people who had strabismus/stereoblindness. She said no, but that she knew what she was doing. I thought I could make up for the lack of experience by being extra vigilant and putting in more effort. But as I've come to learn, picking your vision therapist is the most important part. It's not the effort that you put in. Believe me, for how much money you're going to put into this, you won't have problems putting in the required amount of effort. The most important part is picking someone who has experience and success stories in treating people with adult strabismus.
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