How Did the Last Week Go?
After my appointment last Tuesday, a huge snow storm blew in and we were driving to my son’s indoor soccer game. I was determined to “see” the snow and stood in the parking lot before the game, staring straight ahead trying to see the snow.
With bright lights and cold snow, my weaker right eye has a tendency to want to close so it is a constant fight to keep it open with the bright snow. But the combination of the flood lights, huge and slow snowflakes and patience on my part, led to the perfect storm.
I don’t know if I was seeing with perfect stereopsis, but I do know that the snow looked so different. Part of me wonders if it was because I just never pay attention to the snow, but I know that part of it was my eyes working together.
The snow had depth. It just went on forever, I wanted to reach my hand out, but knew that I could never reach far enough to get all the snowflakes that I could see. There were layers and layers of snowflakes in every direction.
It reminded me of a 3D graph in math where you have an x, y and z axis and the snowflakes were the points that were plotted. In math you can draw a representation of a 3D graph on a piece of paper, even though it appears to be 3D, it is still 2D because it’s on a flat piece of paper.
My world is like that 2D drawing. It appears 3D because of perspective and other cues, but I’m not actually seeing it as 3D. When I saw the snow, I was inside the graph and experiencing every possible point as a snowflake. It was depth in every direction. You can feel how big the air and sky are because you recognize so many little parts taking up space. It is all very fascinating to me and I am excited to continue teaching my brain to see depth.
This week I also was able to view the 3D anaglyph movies on YouTube and see the three dimensional aspect really well. I turned off the lights and it worked so much better. Great tip from the Doc.
During my flashlight push-ups exercise I found a really great hack that is helping me so much!
At first I tried to just use a normal flashlight and look at it straight on with my red/green glasses on. I pretty much see either red or green or both at the same time, but it is very challenging for me to see the colors mix together like they’re supposed to. I was using this tiny little magnetic flashlight from the dollar store and struggling and I decided to just turn it the other direction to see what would happen.
What I noticed is that I was still seeing one red light and one green, one on each side of the light, but they were part of the same flashlight, the flashlight and my hand hadn’t gone double and the background was mixing.
I tried to get all fancy and use pictures to show what I see. They are pretty accurate except I do not see the background or my hand as distinctly red or green like the pictures show, they all kind of blur to a similar color, only the actual light is red or green. Maybe one day I’ll learn how to do cool effects in photoshop to fix it, but that day is not today.
Distance 
About 8-20 inches Away 
Super Close
So when I keep the flashlight within about 8-20 inches of my face I can keep the flashlight as one single unit. If I try to come closer, they separate and the green and red swap sides. If I push the flashlight out too far they separate into two separate lights. I’m working on increasing the space where I can keep the light one. It is interesting to see the red and green swap back and forth and then combine. My brain is working so hard on this! I feel like this is a great stepping stone to make the exercise just a little bit easier for me.
How Did the Appointment Go?
This week I got to bring my seven-year-old daughter, Eloise, with me. She has been having some trouble seeing in school and looses her place frequently. Her teacher recommended having me take her to an eye doctor so we didn’t wait!
Luckily, she doesn’t have any issues that require vision therapy. Her tracking, convergence and divergence are all within normal levels. But, she does have a slight need for glasses so he got her prescription all worked out and she feels like the luckiest girl on the planet because she gets reading glasses.
After she passed her stereo test with flying colors I told her she was SO lucky and that I try so hard, but can never get the animals and shapes to pop out.
She replied, “I know mom, you try so hard you make your eyes pop out like this. 😳 It kind of looks like you are constipated when you do your exercises, but it’s okay, you should keep trying.” I died of laughter. She is the sweetest, also very honest.
Left Eye Focus 
Both Focus 
Right Eye Focus
I have had sick kiddos and have not been sleeping much so my eyes have been struggling to stay aligned the last few days. Everything affects vision. I need good sleep, good food and all the other good things and then I’ll have good vision. haha
Virtual Reality (VR)
Today VR was good. I did the balloons game and he changed the settings so that each eye could only ever see half of the shapes on the balloons. It really forced my eyes to both stay engaged which was fantastic. Now we just need to figure out how to get that onto my home therapy because the in-office adjustments haven’t appeared on my personal Occulus yet. Too bad I can’t just do it myself!
VTS4
Today was the same as the last few times. We start with the ring, then move to one with an alligator that has the number 1-4 on each side; above, below, right and left. My job is to decide which one appears closest to me. I am also trying to really see the space and experience the space behind of and in front of each number. It is pretty easy for me to know which number is closest, but it is more of a struggle to see the space and really feel where they are at.
Stereo Test
Today Dr. Dan pulled out a stereo test to see if I was able to see any stereo. Unfortunately, I was not. But, I could feel my eyes trying to see it. They were working and my brain was churning. Usually I just feel blank when I look at the little buttons, but this time I could feel my brain trying to compute. Even though I couldn’t see the stereo, I still worked and tried for about five minutes just to let my brain practice. Hopefully it will help for next time!
The appointment seemed to pass so quickly and we didn’t get through as many exercises, but we spent a lot of time on VTS4 and I always feel like I make so much more progress with VTS4 so I was more than happy with how things went.
My homework load is back to being excessive. I am supposed to spend less time per exercise and work more on using both eyes in real life.
Homework
- Flash Light Push Ups- Wear red/green glasses and bring a flashlight closer and further while trying to focus both eyes on it and keep it single. Start where it is single and slowly move further away and closer.
- 3D Anaglyphs- Watch 3-5 minutes of 3D anaglyph movies on YouTube and work on getting the depth. Slow down to half speed if necessary.
- Gem Vectogram- Tape it to the window and work on visualizing it in front of or behind the window. Hold a target between me and the window and use that as a reference point to visualize it more easily.
- Brock String- Do all the things and make it better (alternate each day with the Gem)
- Virtual Reality- Spend 10 minutes on Optics Trainer, use other apps to see the SPACE!
- Read with both eyes engaged- Only 5 minutes each day! No going overboard and killing my brain allowed!
Click here to read about my next appointment.