#83 session

The light tube went pretty well.  It almost seemed a little backtracky, but I'm sure that's an abberation.  I didn't do any VT last night.  It felt like a productive workout.  Sometimes I know that whatever workout I'm doing is effective just by the feeling that I have with my lazy eye.  I can feel the lazy eye doing work, or having extra information pouring in, widening the channel.  Today's session was like that even though nothing visually was particularly different or interesting.

Special Tetris went well.  I keep myself pretty far away from the screen now, leaning back in my chair.  I still sometimes get the stacking and falling pieces misaligned and then I get the feedback when the falling piece finally lands.  That still happens, but it's pretty uncommon now.

And yeah, I definitely have control over the perception of cyclodeviation.  Interestingly, even though it's my perception that the lazy eye is the eye that's twisted, I can untwist the image by doing things with my right fixing eye.  Perhaps that's the eye that's twisted.  Again, I don't know whether I'm untwisting the eye, or if I'm doing nothing with the muscles and it's all image correction done with the brain.  I think it's more likely a muscle thing.  Regardless, the more control I can get, the better, and the more confidence that I have that I'm eventually going to achieve my goals.  You know?  If I can practices these movements so that they become automatic, I won't have to think about it, and my eyes will eventually work like a normal person's with no thought involved at all.

Another thing that tells me that things are moving right along is that I started doing an old exercise that I hadn't done in a while.  It's an exercise I use for tracking.  It's an HTML5 Canvas demo.  When you open it up, you'll see a blue ball bouncing around the screen.  What I do is I adjust Chrome's rendering so that the bouncing ball takes up the entire screen, and then I just track the bouncing ball.  I hadn't done this exercise in perhaps months.  But now when I do it, I can see very clearly how far I've come.  I can track the ball with both eyes almost perfectly.  Before, I had a huge amount of hypertropia which caused one of the double images to appear much lower than the other.  But now the hypertropia is almost entirely gone.  Another thing is that I still get some diplopia so I don't have a single image of the blue ball; there is still some diplopia, but I notice that in the area where the double images overlap, that the blue is a lot more blue, which means the brain is summing the input together.  So doing this has given me a big morale boost.  The stuff I'm doing is working.  It's hard to know when you do it on a day-to-day basis, but every once in a while, you get opportunities to step back and see just how far you've gone.

#82 session

It's good.  I did significantly fight against hypertropia when I did the light tube.  The accommodation difference between the two eyes is still there, but it's getting smaller.  I'm thinking I might do the Alpha Delta filters a bit longer after Saturday.  They do seem to be particularly useful when I do them.  I seem to notice more progress when I use those magenta filters than I do with other filters.  I know that I can notice the accommodation difference more easily with them than with other filters, so that perhaps it's easier for me to make the correction.

Special Tetris went well.  I've been hitting it extremely hard lately.  I've been doing 1.5 hours every morning, and usually 45 minutes sometime before I go to bed.  Last night I did another 1.5 hours. So yeah, some days I do something close to four hours of vision therapy.

I didn't mention this before, I don't think, but it does seem that I have some ability to control my cyclodeviation.  I'm not sure how I do this, other than I just will to untwist one of the images.  I'm not even sure which.  Am I doing this by controlling oblique rectus muscles in isolation?  I don't know.  It doesn't seem impossible.  I know some people have some really weird control over parts of their body that they really shouldn't have control over.  But I like the thought that I might be able to control eye torsion along with the independent accommodation of each eye, along with vergence.

I should probably do some saccades sometime today.

#81 session

The light tube wasn't particularly interesting.  It wasn't as stressful as the other day, but it's still a pretty good workout for the most part.

Special Tetris went well.  I have been experimenting with different ways of playing it.  It seems when I look at it dead straight and when there's a falling pieces somewhere in the middle of the screen, that requires a lot of effort to track.  I've also experimented with looking at the screen obliquely in hopes to make the game more challenging.  I notice more esotropia when I am looking at the falling pieces from higher up on the screen.  That may be a place to give more future focus.  Regardless, the game is still challenging, and I notice a different feel in my eyes as the timer continues.  The movement begins to feel more rigid, if that makes sense.  I am looking forward to stereopsis.

#80 session

Today, I noticed that it's getting difficult to see whether there is any accommodation difference between each eye when I'm looking into the light tube.  That is pretty remarkable because accommodation differences between each eye is particularly noticeable with these Alpha Delta filters.  Also, the last few days of light tube have been very stressful again--trying to correct for hypertropia and alignment.  This is because I'm again engaging the brain at an unprecedented level, so whatever misalignment which exists is very noticeable.  I've also noticed that while looking at the pictures that I'm taking of my eyes that the alignment is still diminishing quite a bit.

It seems as though progress is occurring at a very rapid rate as we speak.  I am going to just ride this wave out.

As for Special Tetris--I think a lot of my recent progress is due, in no small part, to this beautifully simple game.  Granted, I've been attacking it hard.  I've been doing it for around 2.25 hours per day.   1.5 in the morning, and another 45 minutes sometime before I go to bed.

I've figured out a simple way to load the game (make it more challenging): play it from farther away.  This requires more motor control of your eyeballs in order to get the pieces fully lined up.  By doing this, I've made the game very significantly more difficult.  The workout yesterday was brutal as all hell.  What I've noticed is that lining up the pieces is a lot harder on some places of the screen than it is on others.  In some places, the pieces want to be misaligned.  This is when you need to implement conscious control and be aware of when you're going to have to do correction.  This is very stressful, especially when you're doing it from afar (your face around two feet from the screen).  I can feel my lazy eye working its ass off.  I can tell that the next time I play it's going to be easier and my control is going to be better.

When I feel myself having a workout like that, I can tell that I'm going to notice changes the next day.  And indeed I have.   I'm getting more and more depth every day.  s'good.

#79 session

Weird, it looks like I forgot to journal yesterday.

The light tube is getting noticeably better every day.  I could be another month away.  I think the Special Tetris is helping with it, honestly.  Especially with the new Alpha Delta filters, it's bright as all hell.

Special Tetris was brutal today.  I figured out a way to load the activity: Play Special Tetris from farther away.  Then in order to get all of the lines lined up from the stacking and falling pieces, you need even better motor control of the lazy eye.  After 45 minutes, I was exhausted, but I forced myself to do another 45 for a total of 1.5 hours.

I expect to see some changes later on in the day with my vision.

I noticed yesterday when I went out for my daily walk that the control of my lazy eye is getting really good.  My conscious control has hit a level that I didn't expect, but controlling it is still a conscious act.

#78 session

I changed back to the magenta Alpha Delta filters.  I can notice what accommodation difference there is more effectively with those than with the light green filters.  The vision is slowly changing on a day to day basis, which means that things are moving along at a brisk pace.  It's hard to say anything interesting about the light tube.  I'm just doing the latest version of fudging, which is trying to fuse while maintaining accommodation.

As for Special Tetris, that's going very well.   It's getting better every day, in that I am able to make it appear as a single super image pretty easily, and accurately.  It's more challenging when the falling pieces are on the sides.

I ask myself the question: did I make significant progress this week?  Yes, I have.  I have made quantitative progress.  I've noticed significantly less misalignment over the past week with my eyes.  I've noticed that I'm much better at Special Tetris.  I've noticed that I'm starting to be able to read with both eyes simultaneously, and I'm starting to see some rivalry and the beginning of fusion.  The world is beginning to look significantly more depthy--especially when I go out for walks at night.  I'll allow myself to be happy.  It's been a good week.

#77 session

Yeah, light tube.  Pretty good looking.  Again, what I'm seeing is pretty much the same as it was yesterday, and the accommodation difference is still getting lower.  I'm also beginning to really start seeing detail coming into the lazy eye.

Special Tetris went really, really well.  It's getting easier and easier, and the super image is getting more and more robust.  It's a little challenging when I am focusing on falling pieces when they're to the side.  But I'm able to get there with no problems.  So that means focusing on those extreme regions is only going to get easier.  That will occur at the same time as fusion, I imagine.  So yes, it does appear that I am going to reach my goals, and it's in no small part thanks to Special Tetris.

Incidentally, I launched a website\forum.  seeinginstereo.net

Check it out.

#76 session

Today's session went well.  There's nothing interesting to say about the light tube.  It's pretty effortless.  There's hardly any effort that goes into hypertropia correction at all.  Most of my energy and concentration goes into accommodating both images at the same time.  My fudging method has changed quite a bit.  I don't know how to explain it, but I almost squint my fusing eye, and I really try to 'feel' the eye in order to get it to accommodate at the same time as the lazy eye.  Things are going really well.  The accommodation difference is almost gone and it feels as though fusion is imminent, perhaps another two or three weeks.

The other day I did some saccades, and man, that was bananas.  It's totally different from before I had started Special Tetris.  The speed is numbing.

As for Special Tetris itself--it's getting better and better.  I can line up the lines from the stacking and falling pieces with each other, which is an indicator of improving accuracy and motor control of the lazy eye.  

As for things I'm noticing...

• I think my cyclodeviation actually changes from clockwise to counterclockwise depending on the angle at which I'm looking at things.  
• Effortless divergence ability seems to have been unlocked in the past few days.  It's much easier to pull the double images together since now the lazy eye is much less lazy.  This means that it also needs more restraint and discipline.  
• I'm beginning to notice more rivalry between the two eyes.  I always read with my fixing eye, but it may be soon that I'm able to read with the input of my lazy eye.  

I'm pretty excite.  

#75 session

Things are going well.  The light tube is about where it was yesterday.  It's still a glowing green circle, although I did notice some changes--I think I'm starting to see the beginning of fusion.  It's hard to explain how it's different, except, it looks more detailed, and summed up from both images.  And also, the accommodation difference between each eye is lessening.

Tetris went well.  I've been trying to do about 1.5 hours, but today I feel like I hit a brick wall around 1.25 hours, so I just stopped at that point.  I don't think I talked much about the cyclodeviation that I have--only that it's a great source of anxiety for me, because I have no idea how there could be an exercise which untwists the eye.  My vision therapist from a while back said that cyclodeviation is usually caused by surgery, which very likely is true in my case, since I have had around three surgeries before I was five years old.

I noticed it around six months after I started doing vision therapy with my optometrist when I started noticing the input coming in from my lazy eye.  I noticed that there was a twist in the visual input that came in from the lazy eye when I was looking at objects that had straight lines, such as license plates.  She had me do Bielschowsky after-image tests which showed some anomalous correspondence, but in addition to that, it revealed that the lines forming the crosshair were not even perpendicular, but slightly off kilter.  So she had me do some other test designed specifically for cyclodeviation, which corroborated what we suspected.  When I asked her why she didn't test for cyclodeviation along with anomalous correspondence when we did the evaluation in the beginning of vision therapy she was visibly embarrassed and I think she might have even said 'whoops.'  It's only my money I guess.

I imagine that it could be fixed with surgery by a master surgeon, but that's sort of a weird way to look at it considering surgery is what caused the cyclodeviation to begin with.  In my mind what I think might be going on is that the superior or inferior oblique muscles became uncalibrated.

So you've got three sets of muscles in the eye: superior and inferior oblique muscles; superior and inferior rectus muscles; and lateral and medial rectus muscles.  If you look at the drawing, only the superior and inferior obliques latch onto the eye from the side, where the muscle passes through a pulley system.  If you look at the action that those muscles would have on the eye, it looks like torsion, like it would cause the eye to twist.  So something like that might be going on... like those muscles are messed up.

My hope is that when my lazy eye is fully powered up that my brain will do some compensation--it will untwist the image in software, sort of like how the brain compensates for a bunch of different things, such as missing information.  I know that if you wear upside down glasses, which flip the view of the world upside down, after a few weeks of headaches the brain will flip the image back rightside up.  Then when you take the glasses off again, the world will again be upside down, then again, after a few weeks of headaches it'll re-flip the world rightside up.  The brain is involved to an amazing degree when it comes to what you see.  Hopefully it can accommodate for a little torsion.

Anyway, when I play Special Tetris, I can notice this cyclodeviation pretty obviously.  On the lazy eye there's a counterclockwise twist.  I'm just going to run the experiment and make the lazy eye less and less lazy and then I'll report what happens.  Will I fuse and have the super image be somewhat weird because one of the fused images is twisted?  Will I be able to fuse at all?  Or perhaps the brain will compensate, making the apparent cyclodeviation completely unnoticeable.  We're going to find out.

#74 session

The light tube went well.  It was about the same as yesterday.  The discrepancy in accommodation from each eye to the other is still diminishing.  I wonder whether it's a result of having added Special Tetris to the mix.

I think around 1.5 hours a day of Special Tetris is all I need.  It's around that point that I hit a wall, and my lazy eye gets really tired.  I am continually getting better at it.  I notice that I can load the task a bit by viewing the screen obliquely and from different angles.  I'm starting to get the point where it's feasible to line up the lines with the falling piece and the surrounding stacking pieces as the motor control gets better.  It's definitely a strong exercise.  My lazy eye is quickly getting much stronger as a result of this game.  In fact, I did saccades last night for the first time in five to six days, and I was amazed at how different it was.  It was almost jarring how fast I was able to move the lazy eye.

That's about it.

#73 session

Good stuff, good stuff.

I can't say things were different in the light tube than from yesterday.  Things look bright and clear while I'm looking at the bright yellow green circle.  There's the accommodation mismatch still, but it does seem to be going down, even if I can't tell a big difference from it and yesterday.

What is interesting to me is Special Tetris.  I've changed my routine a bit so now I'm back to doing 40 minutes of light tube per day, but now I'm doing something like 2-2.5 hours of Special Tetris.  It is challenging, and I am quickly getting better at it.  One of the things that I recently discovered is that it is very difficult to stare at the falling pieces with strong intensity.  This is because that is my lazy\non-fixing eye.  I am fixing on the stacking blocks.  But the beauty of filtering in this way is that it's much easier to sort of force the lazy eye to become a fixing eye as well, because all you have to do is give the falling pieces all of your attention as you would on any object in normal life, but in this case, you're constrained on doing that with only your weak eye.

When I realized that, I started intensely staring at the falling pieces, and I realized that something was definitely happening--it was like my lazy eye was twitching and sort stuttering as if it was struggling to pass the extra information through a narrow channel.  I think if I keep at it with the level of intensity that I am focusing with, I will make very rapid progress.  I know I've said this before, but this time I mean it.  Man... having two fixing eyes... that will be an entirely new experience.  Imagine having two lazy eyes.  That would suck!

#72 session

Yeah, I'm getting up there.  Session #72.  Things are going well.  One of the things that's different about the light tube for me is that the sessions are no longer strenuous.  There's no perceived need for correcting for the hypertropia.  So that's nice.  I don't know whether that's related to the fact that I'm now playing Special Tetris a lot.  Light tube is easy, even though there's still an accommodation mismatch that I've been trying to correct by being relaxed and trying to get the fixing eye accommodated.  People have been telling me to relax a lot when I made that post where I talked about how much strain I put into trying to get both eyes to accommodate while fusing.  But yeah, the difference is still getting smaller.  So I'm still progressing at a pretty quick rate.

I played Special Tetris for another hour and a half today.  I think it's possible that it may be the best conceivable feedback device there is.  It's doing something more than just antisuppression.  It's giving you very quick and valuable feedback.  If you're not using your eyes together in perfect synchrony, there will be no mistaking it.  I've been doing my best to see the whole game as a single super image.  I generally do not push the pieces down.  I just let them drift downward and I try to pay attention to the space between the falling pieces and the stacked pieces around it, and pay attention to how the space in between the pieces and the pieces themselves related to one another.  The spaces between the pieces themselves are geometrical patterns.  By noticing the correct space patterns, you're aligning the eyes, and using both eyes very intensively.

One of the things that I've noticed is that there are certain areas where the pieces fall where the falling piece fades a little.  I think this is the suppression.  Anyway.  It's a good workout.  And actually--I'm pretty tired.  It's definitely a big boy exercise.

#71 session

Today I switched back to the light yellow-ish green Mu Delta filters, which was nice.  It's so different looking into the light with those filters than anything else.  You see so much more.  I was able to get both streams pretty well accommodated for, albeit, it's not particularly long lasting--otherwise, I would be fusing this text as I am writing it (I'm not.  I can see the out of focus lazy eye input ghosting along as I read it.).

After that I did an hour and a half of our special Tetris.  It worked pretty well, I have to say.  I am getting quite good at it, and I can see pretty fast results.  It is my guess that this exercise in conjunction with the light tube, things should move along quickly.  I'll probably do some saccades later on today.

Also, I didn't get stereopsis like I'd hoped last week--that was pretty stupid.  I could be another month or two away.  I should just stop trying to anticipate altogether.

#70 session

Well okay.

The light tube exercises went pretty well I suppose.  It wasn't very different from the previous day.  It was very easy.  There is still the accommodation difference, but that seems to be going away.

About Tetris for Strabismics, I did end up downloading the game and trying it out.  The version of the game I initially tried was helpful and tricky, but I had concerns that it wouldn't be as effective as it could be, since it was very easy to cheat: you were able to play the game fine with just one eye.  I would imagine that a truly useful version would require that you use both eyes.  I voiced this, and then Michael Lievens and others quickly modified the Javascript code, and within minutes, had the new uncheatable version uploaded to the group.  I'll see if I can get it posted to Github so that I can link it to this post.

Anyway, I am optimistic about this exercise.  I'm going to add this game to my routine and replace saccades with Tetris for Strabismics.  I'll still do saccades, but probably not as much.  I want to give the big boy exercises as much time as possible.

About Tetris for Strabismics--what does it do?  As I said in the previous post, it's Tetris that forces you to use both eyes in order to play.  The falling pieces are visible only with the left eye (which in my case is the lazy eye), and the stacked pieces are visible only with the right eye.  I imagine that if your lazy eye is the right eye, you'll want to reverse the filters so that you see the falling pieces with the lazy eye.  

I find this game to be challenging, and based on what I've heard from others in the group, they find it challenging as well.  But I find the fact that it's challenging to be very encouraging.  It seems as though very often, there is disagreement as to where each eye thinks the falling piece is relative to the background.  That means that the eyes are not in sync with one another.  They're not yet one system.  But this disagreement doesn't last long.  I will very often land the brick where it's not supposed to be.  DAMN, or not being sure, it will land where it's supposed to be.  YES.  It's really good feedback.  I've learned how to alter the way that I gaze through my lazy eye so that the falling pieces are in apparent agreement with the stacking pieces.  So this exercise seems to be providing something that other exercises were lacking--integrating the input into the brain so that the world becomes one super image.

#69 session

Oh hey.  It was a good session.  I am getting better at controlling both eyes.  I've been finding lately that I can better control accommodation not by paying attention to the image that I want to accommodate, but instead by paying attention to my eye--like, I pay attention to the presence of my eye and think about the feeling I get when that eye accommodates for something.  That seems to be more effective for gaining control over the eye.  There was no obvious difference from this session to the previous sessions.  Actually, that's not true at all.  This was a pretty easy session.  The sessions from the last few previous days were ridiculously stressful.

Saccades were good.  I think I'm going to start incorporating Tetris for strabismics into my routine.  I was working in my local Hackerspace building a light tube replica, and I was talking with some dude about strabismus.  He told me about a version of Tetris that shows you the stacked pieces with the fixing eye, and the falling pieces with the lazy eye.  This reminded me of conversations that I had with Michael Lievens about that game and how it's apparently extremely effective at fixing strabismus.  Some people have gained stereopsis by playing this game within five weeks, which is incredible when you compare it to my approximate 120 weeks of vision therapy.  Someone from my Vision Therapy for Adults Facebook group pointed me to a Github location that has a download for this game.  I wonder whether it uses anaglyph glasses for filtering.

#68 session

"Come on, you fuck!"

"Accommodate, motherfucker!"

I hear myself saying these words while doing the light tube quite a bit these days.  Lately what I've been seeing are two images laying on top of one another--the lazy one clear and accommodated for; the fixing image is a little blurry.  I want the fixing image to become clear.  I clench my fists and strain my brain, trying to get it to accommodate.  Then I try to relax and use pure consciousness to accommodate the fixing image.  I try to distribute my awareness so that both images can be accommodated while fusing.

Interestingly, by doing this, I'm repositioning my awareness, or consciousness so that it is behind both eyes.  It is interesting because this is the way that a binocularly normal person is.  The consciousness is perceived to be behind both eyes.  So it seems that this final task that I have to do, which is getting my accommodation\vergence mechanism on the same page, is also the same task as making the shift in where my perceived consciousness resides.

Today's session wasn't particularly brutal--it was challenging, but it wasn't painful like the sessions from yesterday where there was a lot of intense resistance against the hypertropia.  It was mainly effort to force accommodation while fusing.

Saccades went well.  They were the best yet, especially around the eight minute mark.

I doubt I'll have stereoscopic vision this week like I previously said that I hoped I would.  I'm hoping sometime before session #100.  The cyclodeviation is a real tormentor.

#67 session

Yesterday's sessions were brutal as all hell.  Correcting for hypertropia was almost as stressful as my first session, both in the afternoon as well as in the evening.

Even today's session was very stressful.  I take this as a positive indicator.  Initially the accommodation difference was significant, and correcting for the hypertropia was very intense.  In fact, a lot of effort went into accommodating both eyes equally as well as correcting for hypertropia simultaneously.  It was a great workout.

Near the end of the workout, I could tell that accommodation wasn't in perfect sync, but that there wasn't a whole lot else that could be done for that particular session.

Saccades went splendidly--they were probably the best yet.  I can't wait to see how things are by next Sunday.

I am periodically getting flashes of awareness of what stereopsis is like... I'm getting them more and more.

#66 session

Pretty good, pretty good.

What seems to be happening is a little bit of a rubber band effect.  I can get the accommodation very close to being in perfect sync by the end of the session.  But then the next time I do the exercise, I sort have to start from scratch again, and it's not like I'm resuming from exactly where I left off.  But the memory is still there, and I can much more easily get to the point that I was previously at.  So progress is definitely occurring at an extreme rate--it's just a little elastic.  I did something like 25 minutes this morning, and both of the images were almost perfectly clear while laying on top of one another by the end of the session.  I'll probably notice significant changes in my vision today.  I just wonder when I'll have the ability to see hidden autostereograms.  I imagine that will come when my lazy eye has locking ability, which, I suppose, would by definition make it not lazy.

I didn't sleep great last night, so saccades could have been better.  Regardless they were pretty good.

Edit:

I forgot to mention that yesterday I had some of the most brutal sessions that I recall ever having.  My lazy eye is really turning on, and thus, the hypertropia was extremely noticeable to my brain and so there was a lost of resistance.  That was both in the afternoon and at night.  It was awesome.  I expect to see significant cosmetic changes this week--most likely not stereopsis, but certainly changes in comesis.

#65 session

Today's session went alright.  The changes that I noticed from the past few days are still there with me.  One of the noticeable things about the light tube was the accommodation difference.  It was still there, but as I continued through the normal 20 minutes, it diminished quite a bit.  A bit of effort that I used was to control accommodation for each eye simultaneously.  That requires quite a bit of conscious effort.  You look at both circles, and for the one that's out of focus, you give it more attention and you will for it to come into focus, and as that happens the other images goes out of focus, and then you repeat it for the other eye until you have found a way to distribute your attention to accommodate both of the images simultaneously.  I think of this as sort of analogous to playing the guitar and singing simultaneously.  Incidentally, I can't do that, but I can try and get both images in sync.

Aside from that, I did fight hypertropia quite a lot, especially as the accommodation for each eye approached parity.  I am hoping and expecting to see massive gains as the week goes by.

Saccades went great.  They were probably the best they'd been.  They're very fast, and not 100% accurate.

I have been sticking my face into my Magic Eye book and amazingly I still don't have any ability to see what's beyond the pages.  I say that it is amazing, because my apparent depth perception is pretty good.  Things look pretty depthy when close up.  My roommate threw my keys at me the other day, and I caught them with an ease that was completely foreign to me.  My usual reaction to "Andrew, catch!" is abject horror.  I guess it means that, yes, my depth perception is way better than it ever was, but it can still improve quite a bit more.

#64 session

It appears that progress has kicked into high gear.  I drank a bit last night--something like seven or eight beers over a period of seven hours... so not too bad.  But I was moderately toasted so that I can feel some of the effects right now.  Not bad at all though.  But I barely ever drink so my tolerance is low.  If I drink at all, it's maybe four beers on a Sunday and that will be it.

It was a few sessions ago that I said that I had noticed changes overnight.  Well, that happened again.  I notice a substantial difference in my vision from yesterday to now.  I don't know how to quantify it, but things are quite a bit more depthy.  The accommodation difference for each eye when I did the light tube was significantly lower than yesterday.  Today I really just kicked that exercise's ass.  I feel like I really know what I am doing right now and the things I'm doing right now are having a direct and powerful impact on my vision.  I can't wait until accommodation is properly synced up.  It seems very probable to me from where I stand that it is the last thing that needs doing... and honestly--I can't imagine that it will be much longer until that happens, given the way things are going.  I very possibly may have stereoscopic vision this week.  It probably won't be that soon.  But maybe.

Saccades were by far the best they'd ever been.  Saccading to the bottom right was pretty effortless.  It's as if the lazy eye formally decided to join the team today.  Accuracy is not yet perfect, but movement is pretty effortless, and thus, a little clunky.  The lazy eye needs a little restraint and discipline, but I expect that to come during this week.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention that today I finished my second go-around with the light tube.  I started over again with the dark red Alpha Omega filters.  I love those filters.  It's pleasurable looking into it.  It gives you that warm, cozy feeling almost like a sitting in a plush chair while in an opiate haze.

#63 session

This session was alright.  It was pretty similar to yesterday.  I am very significantly noticing that I'm getting very close to having both inputs streams accommodated while fusing.  I have made a few modifications to what I have been doing with the light tube.  As I said before, I am now doing three sessions a day while searching for jobs.  That seems to have made a significant difference in the rate of apparent progress.

Another thing I just started doing is setting the timer for 20 minutes.  Then after that 20 minutes, I continue looking into the tube for an arbitrary extra number of minutes.  This is because now I'm at the point where I get the sense that even after the 20 minutes, there's still more work to do, and there's benefit to keep going for a while extra.  This is because when I do a bit of fudging, I can notice almost immediately afterward that the brain can then engage the lazy eye more, and as a result I notice the hypertopia more.  So after the 20 minutes go by, if I'm aggressively resisting the hypertropia, I'm not going to just stop.  I like to end my sessions so that the hypertropia is relatively under control.  Plus, it's my perception that the days that I aggressively resist hypertropia, it means less permanent hypertropia from that moment on.  So I've been doing about 25-ish minutes three times a day lately.  For me at least, 40 minutes of light tube per day doesn't seem to be particularly close to the point of diminishing returns.  I could probably do two hours and it would be well used time, but of course, I have other shit to do.

The other modification that I've made is that I'm no longer doing the fudging method that I started off with where I would pull the images apart by making the lazy eye transiently exotropic, then accommodate both images, maintain accommodation, and then try to pull the images together, by aligning the eyes.  That method seemed to have its purpose at the time, but now that the out-of-sync accommodation problem is significantly diminished, and now that I appear to have a pretty high degree of independent control of the accommodation for each eye, I can lay each input stream on top of one another, and try to straight up force accommodation.  I can't do it, but I can get close, and I can tell that it's a very beneficial exercise, and it's sort of a higher intensity and a higher load version of the previous fudging method that I started doing.  It seems to be extremely effective.  I haven't stopped with the previous versions of the fudging technique--I sort of use my intuition to jostle things around, and do what makes sense at any given moment.

Again, I am anxious.  I'm also just anxious of what computer text is going to look like when my brain has no preference for which eye I (aye-aye) use.  It's interesting because even right now, I can tell quite a massive difference between the flat screen I'm looking at and my fingers and keyboard and Mountain Dew Can in front of me.  It's a slightly disorienting feeling seeing the different ways of seeing.

Saccades went well.  There is still lag when I saccade to the bottom right

#62 session

Things appear to be going great.  My vision has changed substantially overnight.  It's a little difficult to read what I'm writing now because the input created by my lazy eye is becoming more powerful.

When I did the light tube exercises I started noticing that the way my eyes are functioning is more normal.  Like--my lazy eye doesn't *want* to be exo or eso.  Instead, it's wanting to lay both input streams on top of one another--to fuse, I suppose would be the word to use.  And also, when I lay both streams on top of one another, I'm noticing that the accommodation difference for each eye is diminishing.  That is--I'm getting closer to my goal of being able to accommodate for both streams, while I'm fusing them.  Again, this is what a binocularly normal person does.

This very much has been a big theme in my approach to vision therapy--internalizing and intellectualizing what I am seeing and what I am doing, and then thinking about how a binocularly normal person would do those things.  And then thinking about what things I can do in order to get from point A to point B.  It's a lot of experimentation and a lot of self-regulation.  What I mean by that is that as a human being it's easy to get stuck in your own head.  I think that when doing something that's extremely challenging, painful, and potentially demoralizing, it's important to be able to step outside of yourself and try to be as detached as possible.  This certainly applies to vision therapy, because it is potentially extremely demoralizing.  This is because it's a pretty new thing, and it's not well understood.  Usually when you go to a doctor or an engineer or whoever deals with problems, they'll give you pretty good answers.  With vision therapy, this is usually not the case, even if 'vision therapists' let on that they know what they're doing.  So the result is that you're alone, and stranded with a fucked up visual system that only tiny number of people on the planet understand and whom you have practically no hope of getting access to.

So yeah, mental toughness is a requirement, and knowing a few things about psychology is important, just so you're able to see the signs of a mental breakdown before it happens.  When you feel it coming, try to step outside of yourself, meditate, or do yoga.  Remind yourself that you have to be an observer, and that this doesn't all happen at once.  I'm hoping that three months of light tube and a few other exercises will be enough to achieve my goals.  Really, that's incredibly quick, but it sure doesn't feel that way.  Granted--I'd been doing a bunch of nonsense vision therapy exercises for 2.5 years prior to this.

Anyway--that was a long tangent.  Saccades went great.  The accuracy is still improving.  But I am more excited by what I saw when I did the light tube.  I am expecting to see some changes in my vision as I go about my day.

#61 session

This session seems to have gone great.  Like I mentioned in the previous area, I said that I had started to change and experiment with different variations of the fudging technique.  I've been synchronizing my accommodation by making the lazy eye esotropic as well as exotropic and then slowly pulling the images together while maintaining accommodation in both eyes.

Another thing I've been doing is simply been trying to lay both images on top of one another and trying to get both images accommodated in that way--just by being aware of each eye and trying to fix them.  This seems to actually work.  Before, I couldn't get the accommodation for each eye any anywhere near where they should be when both images are laying on top of one another.  This means that whatever the hell I'm doing--it seems to be working.  The difference in accommodation in each eye is diminishing.  It's not yet Sunday (today is Thursday), but I can say with certainty that it has been a productive week already.

Saccades went very well.  It wasn't noticeably better than yesterday.  But vision in general is improving.  I am noticing that more information is coming in and getting intercepted by the brain, almost on a daily basis.

#60 session

This session seemed pretty normal, but every new session is different, especially when it's the next day.  I think the double images were pretty close to one another when I fudged.  That's one of the indicators of progress which I mentioned previously.  Another indicator of progress, I believe is when I put both of the images on top of one another and I compare the accommodation--how sharp am I able to get both of the images when I am looking at both of them sharply?  That seems to have improved quite a bit today.

I've also been experimenting with the fudging method--by inducing double vision by going eso instead of exo with the lazy eye.  I seem to get a similar result.  I can see the accommodation change as I change vergence.

Saccades went well--surprisingly well since it is still morning for me.  It's always around the 8-10 minute mark that the accuracy really goes into high gear.  This is a very positive indicator to me.  Anyway, I won't get into it that much more.  Things are going well.  Great.

#59 session

Yeah, things went well.  The double images this morning were pretty close to one another.  Last night, I spent the entire time fighting the hypertropia.  It was nice.  This morning there was very little discernible fighting against the hypertropia, although it is my suspicion that it is always there in some capacity.  I did a good amount of fudging.  I did find that immediately after I fudged a bit, that the brain engaged the lazy eye more and then I started to fight the hypertropia more than before.

Saccades went really well.  By the way that the saccades are going it feels as though I could be a few weeks left.  After about five or seven minutes of saccades, I find that I start to land directly on targets with no real need to adjust.  When I saccade to the bottom right there is still a little bit of lag, although when I do the saccades in the afternoon and at night time the lag is minimal.  It's just a nice workout.  I forgot to mentally occupy the lazy eye this time around when I did the saccades.

It's funny observing how my vision is different when I go about my day.  I am now aware of the two different ways of seeing simultaneously and I can sort of imagine what stereopsis is like now.  I remember that Susan Barry mentioned somewhere that when she improved her vision her stereo ability began with objects that were close to her and then as she got better, her stereo ability would function on increasingly more distance objects.  Well, right now as I am typing, that distance has gone to my keyboard and my work area... so the speakers and keyboard and toothpaste thingy are pretty depthy looking to me.  Anyway.  So.  I got that going for me.  Which is nice.

#58 session

Today's session went goodly.  There was a moderate amount of fudging, and also quite a bit of fighting against the hypertropia.  Accommodation for each eye is still significantly out of sync.  If the out-of-syncness of the accommodation of each eye is an indication of how much farther I have to go, I'd guess that I'm about two months away from my goals.  Yikes!!  That would put me at session #118!!!  Of course, hopefully things move a bit faster than that.

Instead of fudging, I tried doing something a little more hardcore than fudging--that is, laying each image on top of one another, and then trying to straight up force accommodation on each eye.  That may be the last final step once the out-of-syncness comes to a point that is tolerable.

Saccades went well.  Every day they're better.

#57 session

Today I switched to the final Mu Epsilon filters.  Who knows where I'm going to be by the end of the week.  I'm really curious because right now things are pretty depthy and strong.  Everything is coming together as it should.  It will likely be another month or so, because I still have double vision and I have to implement a pretty good amount of conscious control to keep things single.  But who knows... maybe things will snap into place this week.  The small amount of floating that my lazy eye is doing will suddenly cease, and the lazy-eye image will fuse, and I will have a single vision of the world.  I imagine that it will be a jarring experience.  It's hard to imagine that it won't be.

Anyway--light tube exercises lately have been quite a bit of correcting for the hypertropia that exists.  I haven't had a proper chance to do a lot of fudging.  This morning and afternoon I did only a slight amount of fudging.  I did a bit more fudging just now.  Things to appear differently now for sure.  As of this writing I feel significantly closer to having reached my goals than ever before.

I just hope I didn't fuck anything up by doing this fudging.  Like... maybe someone who knows something about the eye will read this someday and gasp in horror at the things I do with my eyes.  I suppose I'm a little worried that I might have developed some faux foveas.  But oh well.  Regardless, my vision has never been better than it is now, and I'll just continue down this road and see where it takes me.  It sure is a lonely journey.

Oh yeah... saccades were awesome.  The accuracy was quite good.  Next time I'll put in more conscious effort to try and occupy the lazy eye so that I don't try to hit the target, but instead occupy the eye and let it hit the target naturally--you know... in the way a binocularly normal person would.

#56 session

This session went alright.  Man this shit feels like it's moving slowly, even though that's not the case.  I'm just impatient.  I didn't notice anything particularly different about the light tube session from yesterday... although last night's session was like the previous night's session.  I was fighting the hypertropia like crazy.  I hardly did any fudging whatsoever.  So stuff is still happening.  When I fudged today, I noticed that the images were pretty far away when both images were accommodated (sharp).

Regardless--this is the last week I have with these Alpha Delta filters.  I will be going back to Mu Epsilon and then I will be done with my second round of syntonics.  One week at a time, I have to remind myself.  My vision is improving.  All I do is ask myself--'has my vision improved in the past week?'--if the answer is yes, then I keep doing what I'm doing.  If not, then I switch things up a bit.  I do believe that my current regimen is probably not going to change until I've reached my goals.

Saccades went well.  Lately every saccades session has been noticeably better than the previous.  I think once my lazy eye finally develops locking ability, that will represent a sudden and huge change in my vision.  As of right now, the lazy-eye image drifts around a bit.  I think that the fact that it's not yet locking means that for the most part there's still quite a bit of conflicting input.  Once the lazy eye locks on, it will become fully powered on and I will suddenly begin to intercept a LOT more visual information.  It would be great if that happened soon.  I have noticed that since I've bumped up to doing three sessions instead of two, that progress has sped up.  It does seem to make a difference.

My hypertropia appears to be almost gone when I look in the mirror.  It's still there, but it's almost gone.  It's truly remarkable.

#55 session

This session went quite well.  It is morning, so it's not as good as it will be in four\five hour's time.  What is there to say about it?  Umm, I don't know.  There was no difference from yesterday.  I fudged--took breaks--fudged some more until the buzzer went off.  I am noticing more and more than when I look out into the world that the double images are getting closer to one another.  So I guess I'll leave it at that for now.

Saccades went quite well.  I daresay they were again the best they'd been yet.

There was something I wanted to say, but I forget what.  Shit.  Maybe it'll come back later.  Tschuess.

Edit:

ok, it just came to me.  So last night when I did the light tube, I did very little fudging.  The main thing that I was focused on was correcting for the hypertropia.  It was constant and it was one of the most strenuous sessions that I had since session #15--or around those parts.  But it wasn't unpleasant--rather, it was quite nice to have that fight again.  I had talked about what I think is going on back in session #15 or around those parts.  Basically what happened is the strenuousness of the exercises would continually vacillate.  One day it would be a lot of work; the next day it would hardly be any work.  What I think is happening is that as I continue vision therapy and make progress the brain engages the lazy eye more and more so that that what hypertropia is there (at this point, what little hypertropia is left) is really bothersome to the brain.  Then when I do the light tube exercise, I fight to correct it more.  The fighting usually results in less permanent hypertropia for the next time, so that the next time I do light tube exercises, the amount of hypertropia which is there is tolerable to the brain so that the session is much easier than the previous exercise.  A few more sessions down the road, the brain will engage the eye more and so the hypertropia is again noticeable.  So it keeps going back and forth in spurts.

Back in the session #15 days this vascillation would happen with high frequency--very two to three exercises I would strenuously fight against the hypertropia.  Well, that doesn't happen too much these days.  I am always fighting the hypertropia to some extent with my light tube exercises, but yesterday it was bananas.  It was different and very strong.  It's really interesting\exciting.  It was surprising because I didn't expect to have to fight so much considering how little hypertropia remains.  But it's good.

#54 session

This session appeared the same as that of the previous day.  I should mention that because I'm currently in the process of getting employment, I've bumped up my sessions to three times a day.  I've been doing light tube three times per day and saccades twice a day.  This is because I currently have more time, and my excitement is building, and I feel like I am in a place that I haven't been at yet and I just want to see this through.

When I fudge, I pull the images closer to one another.  After a while, they get close, but it seems hard to get them both sharp.  Then I give it a break and look at the images softly for a while.  Then I try again, and then I'm able to get the images sharp, but they remain far away again.  Then I fudge again.  This resting period can be around 20 seconds.

Saccades went well.  There's nothing to complain about.

Also, I just looked at myself in the mirror.  My eyes look pretty damn awesome at the time of this writing.  The vertical misalignment is almost completely gone.