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My Story Part 3: Young Adult Life With Strabismus: A severe Eyeturn and Patching
Dec 12, 2022
This is the third video is a series about the treatments that I went through to fix my strabismus as a child and what eventually led me to vision therapy and surgery as an adult.
Part 1: https://youtu.be/rVop0sud644
Part 2:https://youtu.be/LRn-Kb6RDlQ
Part 3: https://youtu.be/Z6RAjVPYQRw
Part 4: https://youtu.be/QVCP_pVTgNU
To learn more go to https://strabismussolutions.com/
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0:00
Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels and I have Strabismus, which is when your eyes do not point
0:08
in the same direction. Even though they look straight, they aren't perfectly straight. And
0:14
getting to this point has taken years of work. And right now I'm doing a series where I'm
0:20
explaining where I started with all the things my parents said when I was a little kid to help
0:25
with my Strabismus through the teenage years. And in this video, I'm getting to the
0:29
the point of when I decided to start trying to do vision therapy to really, truly fix the
0:36
Strabismis that I have. So, if you want to know more, you can always go to my website at strabismusolutions.coms
0:45
And there is a timeline where you can basically go through everything from the time I was born
0:52
until now, kind of see how my vision journey has progressed. And also on the website, you're going to find a lot of resources
0:59
to help you know what you can do to take it, go to the next step
1:04
I left off in the last video after finishing college. And during college I'd gotten married, gotten a degree in math education
1:11
and I started teaching at a high school. And it was here that I did notice that I had an eye turn
1:19
And the reason would be because I would call on these students to answer a question
1:24
and there were sometimes giggles or they'd like look behind them. And I didn't really think a lot of it, but I didn't really think a lot of it, but I would
1:29
I did notice that it's like, huh, they don't know if I'm looking at them or not
1:34
I didn really relate that to having strabismus or the problems that I had as a kid and wearing glasses and patching I really like there was a disconnect there And I just was a little bit oblivious
1:46
not really quite understanding. So I only taught for one year because then I had my first son
1:51
and I decided to stay home with him and stayed home and just took care of my baby. I had another
1:58
daughter and another daughter and another daughter. And I was a full-time stay-home mom. I took pictures
2:05
of my kids all the time and I didn't really take a lot of pictures of myself and I didn't do
2:10
selfies and so I just really was busy and I didn't notice that my eye turn was getting worse and
2:16
worse and somewhere along the line I look through pictures and try to figure out when was it that
2:23
my eye turn got so bad and I really don't know it was some time between the age of 25 and 30 and up until
2:33
that point it was turned a little bit and then when I was really tired it would turn a lot but
2:37
it was always turned some but but never like this huge amount and then by the time I was 30 it was always
2:42
out here it never was closer to being straight fast forward to this one night and I know I've
2:49
told this story in a few different videos but I was driving a babysitter home and the on come there's an
2:56
oncoming car and I thought they were in my lane and that was just like some visual confusion going on
3:01
I don't know if it was double vision or just what was happening, but I swerved off the road
3:06
and then realized like they actually were in their lane and it was me, my eyes were not working
3:12
properly. And I was like, I almost killed this girl. Like if I'd run into a pole or something like
3:16
that And that was when I said something wrong with my eyes and I not going to stop until I figure out what it is And that was a huge turning point for me because before then I made appointments and gone to optometrists
3:31
because the vision in my right eye was always a little blurry and I knew something was wrong and I kept trying to get glasses
3:36
It's going to be like, I need glasses. I think if I got glasses it would help me drive better
3:41
And I kept like demanding glasses and they would always tell me the same thing
3:45
Like it won't work. They didn't say, you have something called amblyopia, and glasses won't fix the problem
3:50
It's a brain problem. They didn't explain that to me. They just said, no, glasses won't help
3:54
Just be glad that you can see as well as you can. You have great vision. And at this point, after the car incident, I thought, I am not taking no for an answer
4:03
I am getting glasses. I will go until I get glasses. And so I called my parents and I said, what kind of doctor helped me when I was little
4:11
And that's when I kind of tried to figure out the difference between ophthalmologists and optometrists
4:15
and I called the ophthalmologist's office and they were booked like three months out and their
4:21
appointments were like $350 and I was like new and then I found out I had vision insurance and the
4:28
optometrist I could see for free in a week and I was like okay I'll do that one
4:32
It was that appointment that I finally pushed and pushed until he said well yeah your your eyes
4:37
are not pointing in the same direction and actually I don't even think he said that he just said
4:43
yeah you have a weak eye and your eyes aren't working together and I was like I
4:48
knew it I knew there was something wrong and so he said yeah you can try patching
4:52
and I said well patching like make my eyes work together and he said maybe you know
4:57
maybe they work together and it won wander anymore because I knew it would wander sometimes and I just try it you know five hours a day for six months And so that exactly what I did And that was the beginning
5:10
That was the beginning of my vision therapy journey. Now, he wasn't a vision therapy doctor
5:15
And I still go to him sometimes if I need to get glasses or something
5:19
But that was the beginning. That was the first glimmer of hope that I had that I could actually fix my eyesight
5:26
that someone said, yeah, there's something wrong with your eyes, and there's something that you can
5:31
maybe do about it. And he wasn't terribly hopeful. He said, yeah, you might need surgery
5:35
Surgery might help, but yeah, you can try patching first. So that's what I did. I went to his office
5:42
Sorry, I went home from his office, I went online, I bought patches, and I started patching my eyes
5:47
for five hours a day. Not that fun. I'm going to end this one here. If you want to know
5:56
how patching went, how I use patching and eventually found vision therapy, then go ahead and check
6:04
out the next video that I put out here. If you want to know more about what you can do, if you want
6:09
to find vision therapy, go to my website. I have tons of information on there. If you go to
6:14
strabismus solutions.com slash find VT, I can even help you find a vision therapy office for free
6:20
because I don't want you to have to wait as long as I did to get the help and get somebody who
6:25
actually understands what's going on with your eyes. I want people to be able to get that information right now
6:30
So go ahead and go there if you want help. And other than that, go to the next video
6:37
if you want to know how patching went
#Health Conditions
#Vision Care
#Eye Exams & Optometry