Today I went in for my second official vision therapy appointment. To check out how I got to this point you can jump over to my Vision Therapy page that starts at the beginning of my vision therapy journey.
So far, I’m not seeing much progress visually, but I’m keeping up with the progress pictures.
How did the last two weeks go?
The exercises over the last few weeks went pretty well. I definitely saw some improvements. I am experiencing quite a bit of double vision, especially when I try to fixate my eyes on a target for longer than about 3 seconds. My brain isn’t very excited about the double vision so it tries to keep my eyes constantly moving around.
I have been struggling so much with ADD symptoms that have come on strong. I lose my train of thought quickly, have a difficult time finishing tasks, struggle to focus on conversations, get distracted easily, and I just can’t seem to keep my attention on anything, especially my eyes. Just forget eye contact altogether…
Just in writing this post I probably got up and walked away or got distracted about 50 times, while in the middle of a sentence.
I’ve always had a little ADD, nothing that I’ve medicated, but things feel like they are getting out of control lately. I am a math tutor and am struggling to stay focused long enough to finish a problem, it’s like my intelligence has plummeted. I discussed this with Dr. Dan today and he said that these symptoms aren’t out of the ordinary and won’t last forever. My brain is being rewired and some temporary setbacks are to be expected.
When I finish on the other side, things will be better than they ever were before. I just need to try to stay focused long enough to do my vision therapy homework. Maybe I’ll try some medication to help me get through this rough patch. For now, I’m going off sweets to see if that makes a difference for me.
The appointment itself was very similar to last time. We did many of the same activities and worked on the same skills with new activities. Here is the breakdown of what we did today.
Vectographs
We spent at least half of my appointment working with polar glasses and different types of vectographs. He would have me get super close and try to see the circular image with both eyes in my peripheral vision. I don’t feel like there were any improvements from last week. I still can’t at all see it popping in or out of the page and can only see both rings if they are spread super far apart. I’m going to work really hard this week on getting that peripheral vision to blend together or to at least see both rings in my peripheral.
I bought my own vectograph so I could practice at home. I searched online and you can’t get them anywhere unless you are an optometrist, I got one through my optometrist for $180 (that is his at-cost price!) that I will be using for my therapy. When I’m done using it I’m hoping to sell it on
Doll Head Turns
This was just a simple exercise that we did for maybe two minutes that I’ll be doing for exercise this week. I fixate (look) at something out in front of me and turn my head from side to side, up and down while keeping my eyes focused on the target.
It is an interesting sensation. I can feel my eyes switching from the left to right eye as I turn my head slowly from side to side.
Eye Stretches
My eyes have a tendency to jump instead of track smoothly. I also can sometimes feel a strain when I look really far to any side, up or down. I also have very limited control over what my eyes are doing. Eye stretches can help with all of that.
This week I will be tracking a pencil in circles with both eyes and continuing the same “eye stretch” activities as last week.
OKN Stripes
He didn’t even waste time testing this today, I knew that I still needed more work on this one so he just reassigned the exact same homework as last week. He did say to try some new speeds and widths of strips and see if that helped me strengthen my OKN reflex in my eyes.
Peripheral
My peripheral vision is pretty sketchy. You’d think it would be great! I always have an eye pointing off to the side so you’d think that I take in more, but unfortunately, that is not how it works.
I thought that I had great peripheral vision, but when I started trying to do my son’s vision therapy homework to prove to him that it wasn’t that hard, I could barely do it. He was WAY more effective at it than I was!
Here is my peripheral activity for the week. Dr. Dan calls it “Peripheral 1,2, 3” It is the same activity he had my son doing a few weeks ago and since I spent quite a bit of time working on it, I had the whole paper memorized. I went ahead and made a few extra versions so that I can’t just memorize where the numbers are. Here is a downloadable copy of one of them if you are interested.
The object is to fixate on the star while using your peripheral vision to see the numbers while staying as close to the paper as possible. You can count from 1-20 or go backward. I’ve also counted by 2’s and 3’s. Being the math nerd that I am, I also did prime numbers and Fibonacci’s sequence.
I plan to spend a ton of time on this one this week and get my peripheral vision on track. I am also going to play around with the chart and red/blue glasses with this version:
I’m thinking it can give me feedback about whether I’m using both eyes or not for those peripheral numbers. My right eye will only be able to see the yellow numbers and my left will only see the blue ones. Dr. Dan always scolds me for making up exercises and trying things that he hasn’t approved so I better ask first. haha
Speaking of that…do not try any of these exercises unless you are under the supervision of a vision professional. Every case of strabismus or amblyopia is different and each requires a different treatment plan. I’m sharing for people who may be interested or perhaps are on the same journey that I am who need some fresh ideas to share with their vision therapist. I don’t at all intend for this to be a treatment plan for anyone.
That’s a wrap for my second appointment. I’m wishing that I was making huge progress and leaps and bounds, but it turns out that the progress is just a slow as my optometrist originally promised. This is turning out to be an excellent exercise of my patience.