It's a shitutation

Heh heh.  Get it?  It's a portmanteau for shitty situation.  Okay, so maybe I lifted that from Dane Cook's relationshit (shitty relationship).  Anyhiz.  

I'm not talking about my current situation.  At the moment, everything is going incredibly well.  It's mind-blowing how much my vision has improved over the past three weeks.  It's like... the ramp is so long, and I'm doing the exact right things, so the result is significant perceived changes every day, and huge perceived changes every week.  

No, by shituation, I'm talking about the situation that I was previously in, and which I believe many, many others are currently in.

It's the situation where gaining stereopsis as an adult is still new and controversial.  It's where you have educated people like Susan Barry who gained stereopsis themselves, and say you should go see a COVD vision therapist to put in your hand to fix your vision.  And at the same time there are many many optometrists and eye doctors who will tell you that vision therapy doesn't work.  

Well, who's right?  Susan Barry is right.  But also, so kind of are the vision therapists who say vision therapy doesn't work.  I think they're both kind of right.  As the optometrist I recently saw said to me 'Adults very rarely gain stereopsis.  Oh by the way, if you want to gain stereopsis, I recommend this vision therapist.'.  Wtf man.   You guys are all creeps.

Indeed, one of my homies back from the Facebook days, Michael Lievens (has a great blog Strabismus World) is someone who was on the same journey as me, and who gave up and had a kid.  So too, presumably, have many others I had gotten to know over the years.  Why?  Because adult brains are hard, and gaining stereopsis as an adult is extremely difficult.  

So the shituation is that there are many many people out there who have vision problems who are given somewhat false hopes by people like Susan Barry ("See, I did it, so can you.").  Those people are given hope, and then they spend huge amounts of time and money on a vision therapist and ultimately give up due to lack of progress and funds.  So they spend a lot of time and money on a vision therapist and get nothing in return.  And actually, it can be worse than if they had never started, because they had begun to lift the suppression, without having full fusion, which can result in double vision.  And guess what vision therapists are not going to do: they're not going to refuse your money.  That's the shitutation.

Adults becoming conscious to the idea that they can gain stereopsis is still a new thing.  It's nascent tech, and thus, vision therapy as an adult is a painful ordeal.  Being on the forefront is not for the pain-intolerant.  

The good news, however, is that technology generally goes in one direction: it gets better with time.  I do think that, with time, Susan Barry will be proven right--even if it is with some caveats.  I never had a vision therapist tell me to do keto or to submerge my body into ice water, and I probably never will.  It just sound nuts.  In time, I think it will be obvious that gaining stereopsis as an adult must be combined with activities that put the brain into a ready state in order for the training to be effective.  That can be Syntonics, tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation), the ketogenic diet, or daily cold exposure.  Of course, if you're reading this blog, you know what has worked for me (keto, and cold exposure).