Melissa – Page 24 – Strabismus Solutions

I patched my strong eye for over three months in an attempt to improve my lazy eye and strabismus before I discovered vision therapy. I think that I needed to patch and God knew that. Developmental Optometrists, the ones who do vision therapy, are pretty against patching and advertise a "patch free" method for fixing a lazy eye. If I had found vision therapy right away, I would have never patched. Patching was a very important part of my process so I'm grateful that God hid Vision Therapy from my view until it was time. So how did I discover vision therapy? It was actually through my brilliant husband, Zac. I was complaining about patching, bless his heart for listening, and about how my left eye is going to get more wrinkly faster from stretching it out every time I pull off the patch. I was sick of waiting until my 4-5 hours of patching was finished to shower, exercise, fix my hair and make-up and go out in public. He said "they should make a contact lens that blocks everything like a patch so you don't have to wear one. It was genius and I was ready for us to invent it be billionaires, but somebody else beat us to it. After a bunch of phone calls and internet research, I discovered a contact lens that could work as a patch. My next step was to find an optometrist who had this miracle contact lens. I started calling optometrists in town, I think I called about eight different offices. I explained my situation to each receptionist, "Hi, I have strabismus and am patching for 4-5 hours every day and I'm looking for an alternative to patching..." They all thought I was crazy, but there were a few who did the research and called me back. But then there was one who said, "you should really call the Idaho Vision Development Center, they treat people like you." She convinced me to wait on the contact lens until I went to an appointment there. I called the office and chatted with the secretary and my interest was piqued. She told me that he does a totally different treatment than ophthalmologists and regular optometrists. She convinced me that if there was anyone that could fix my vision, it was him. I was sold and scheduled my free consultation. Here is what I experienced at the first appointment.