Vision Therapy Appointment #14 – The Brock String Miracle


Click here to read about last week’s appointment.

How did the Last Two Weeks Go?

This week was one that was full of so much success and excitement on the vision therapy front. I had a few comments that my eyes are looking straighter on instagram so I dug up an old picture and did a side by side comparison.

Left- October 14, 2019 Right June 18, 2019
Both pictures are me with a relaxed gaze, not forcing the eyes to align.

They were right!! My eyes are definitely getting straighter. They aren’t perfectly aligned and I am not done with my journey, but seeing the progress is incredibly motivating for me.

I was excited to share the progress with other people who are considering vision therapy as a treatment for strabismus. It works! It is time consuming and expensive and difficult, but it works!

The next success came when we got our family pictures back. The pictures weren’t perfect, by any means. There were awkward smiles, crazy shoes that snuck in, and somebody may have had an accident, BUT my eyes were close enough to being aligned that I didn’t have to veto any of the pictures for the first time in FOREVER. They aren’t perfect, but at a distance they look close enough for me. I was thrilled with the results.

Me and Hubby Zac in the back
Eloise (7) Everly (2) Adeline (5) and Teagan (11)

Have I mentioned my new best friend, Hanah? We met on instagram and she is going through vision therapy at the same time as me. We love to compare notes and share our successes and failures with each other. Her eye doctor also gives me lots of tips to help me keep progressing.

The latest from that dynamic duo is that I should start working on the brock string. I haven’t been doing exercises with it but Hanah does so I had to try to copy her. And guess what?!? It did something amazing to my brain.

After about 10 minutes of messing around with it, I stopped and moved on to the gem. I’ve never been able to see the gem move without my prism glasses. But this time it was different. I put on my polarized glasses, looked at the gem and didn’t see much, but then when I tapped it with my finger, my finger went right inside the ring. And then I switched the gem the other way, base in I think, and I tapped it and it was sort of like tapping a fish tank and the ring was inside the tank, I couldn’t get to it.

I called my son over and he confirmed that my eyes were actually crossing, which is a first. I took off the glasses and skipped around my house cheering for myself. I actually fused the ring and crossed my eyes all on their own without any special aid from prisms or plus lenses.

In my mind it meant that surgery was no longer on the table. Surgery has been hanging out in the back of my mind ever since I visited an ophthalmologist (read about it here) and he told me that vision therapy could teach both eyes to work, but without surgery or prism glasses, it would be impossible to have stereopsis. I had been hoping he was wrong, but that moment with the gem proved that he was wrong.

So here is the next before/after picture. The left is what it used to take for me to see the gem “float.” The right is my new normal. No extra glasses and lenses for me. I’m progressing!

How did the Appointment Go?

The appointment was fantastic. Dr. Dan was excited about all of my progress. He was very hesitant about the Brock String because he usually waits until patients are further along to use it, but when I wowed him with my skills and he saw my eyes cross I think I convinced him that the time for the brock string is now.

Pola-mirror

I am finding that I need to do some warm-up exercises that get my brain going before I try to do more difficult activities that require stereopsis. Pola-mirror is perfect. I swear that this exercise has single handedly made the biggest difference in the last six weeks. The feedback is so instantaneous!

Today I wore the polarized glasses and looked into the mirror. I am able to back up 12-14 inches from the mirror and still see both sides of the glasses as clear, which means both eyes are working. I add head movements and practice engaging both eyes while my head is moving.

Today I realized that if I get too far back I can still engage both eyes and the left side stays clear. I can see a clear lens and a black lens on the left though, so my brain just isn’t fusing those images together. Up close things are great though, I am just going to keep working my way back from the mirror.

Yoked Prism

We spent a quick 5 minutes or so with me wearing the yoked prism (I think they were 15 diopters) while Dr. Dan tossed bean bags to me. Then we made it exciting and we each had one and passed them at the same time. I even switched between my left and right hand and probably caught it 75% of the time.

My favorite comment, “I don’t understand how you can do this so well without stereopsis.” It’s because I’m doubly gifted, as my sister, Julie, told me. I’m going to become a super athlete when I get this stereo vision figured out.

Brock String

The brock string is the most brilliant, simple, incredible tool in all of vision therapy. Anyone can make one, and it gives fantastic feedback. Even after just one week of using it, I’m seeing big progress.

So what is a Brock string? A brock string is a thin rope, about 12 feet long with 4-5 moveable beads on it. You tie one end to something, I like to use doorknobs, and then hold the other end right at your nose.

It is so hard to explain it with words, so I had to make some pictures to help. The idea is that you focus on one bead, in each of the pictures below we’re assuming that the person is looking at the blue bead.

So Picture 1 is reality. There is a string touching the nose and there is one of each bead on a string going straight in front of the person. The cool thing is that people with “normal” or “stereo” vision see just one blue bead, but everything else is double. The string makes an “X” that crosses right through the bead that they are looking at.

The idea is to make sure that the X is right at the bead. The crazy thing to me is that the actual string is right in the middle. My logical brain struggles with that.

In the past when I would look at a brock string I would see just one string, exactly as in the photo above, slightly angled towards the right. I couldn’t see a second string at all. If I wore prism glasses, I could see double and sometimes get the strings to almost cross, but they weren’t lining up vertically.

Now I’m making big progress. If I wear the prism glasses, it over corrects and puts the double image on the wrong side so I guess it’s time to throw those glasses in the trash.

With just my eyes and no extras I see the picture below to the left. I look at the blue bead and I see two blue beads on two separate strings. My math brain recognized that somewhere down the line the strings had to cross (like in the picture) so I started searching with my peripheral vision for that crossing point.

After a couple days of this last week I was able to see the strings crossing in my peripheral vision at the red bead. I slowly moved the red bead closer to the blue bead and then I started getting flashes of a single blue bead.

At the appointment today, Dr. Dan gave me some awesome feedback. He watched my eyes and when he could see them cross he would say “that’s it” or “hold it there” and I would try to hold it. I started realizing that the blue bead looked so much more bold and round and awesome when he told me I had it.

I started seeing the picture to the right, a “Y” which is a great step. I even caught a few glimpses of an “X” right through the blue bead.

I’m super pumped about the progress I’m seeing in such a short amount of time. There is so much more to learn, but I feel like it’s all possible now.

VTS4

Today was awesome on the VTS4. As I watched the computer screen I could just feel that my eyes were working. Instead of just using a blank ring we tried a ring with a dog in it and another one with a frog. I could just see the 3D. I still strong to see it without touching the screen. When I touch different parts of the screen the depth is so much easier to see. I imagine that as I keep going I will be able to see the depth, even without touching the screen.

Virtual Reality

Nothing new here. We spent time on the optics trainer and he adjusted my prescription, but we ran out of time so that got cut a little short.

Can you tell that I am super excited this week?! There are so many weeks when the progress is so slow or non-existent so to get a week with so many big successes is just awesome. I’m going to use the momentum to just keep propelling myself forward.

Homework

  1. Pola Mirror – Wear Polarized glasses and look into a mirror. Focus on getting both eyes working so that both sides appear clear. Add in head movements to stimulate the VOR Vestibular Ocular Reflex.
  2. VR Occulus GO- 30 minutes, each day. Use the new Optics Trainer app. 
  3. Gem Vectograph – Hold at A and tap the center, trying to see the 3D, then hold at 1 and try to see the 3D. Do this with and without my prism glasses on. Add on balancing on one foot during the exercises.
  4. Yoked Prism- Keep stretching my brain with different activities with the yoked prism. Try juggling or playing Kubb outside while wearing them. Change the direction of the prism 2 times each day.
  5. Hide and Seek Eye Stretches
  6. Hoop Overlap – Start by trying to see both hoops. Once I can see both hoops try to make them overlap in the middle.

Click here to read about my next appointment.

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