My Story Part 4: Discovering Vision Therapy and The Spiritual Side to My Journey

Hi, my name is Melissa and I have strabismus and this is the fourth video in a series of videos

I'm making about my history with strabismus from the time I was born up until now. Trying to help

people understand what it's like to have strabismus throughout the years and how I have come to correct

it. And if you want to know more information about that, you can go to strabismusolutions.com

and I have a lot of resources there. Some of them are free resources like helping you find a vision

therapy office or helping you decide between surgery and vision therapy, different things

like that. So be sure to check it out. In this video, I'm going to be talking about the very

very beginning of my journey and how I sort of started the vision therapy process

So I went to an optometrist who told me to patch for five hours a day and I started doing that and

it was really, really challenging. I couldn't hardly see out of my right eye, even though I had

35 20 vision or something like that is that even possible um it didn't matter because it wasn't

functional like I I hadn't been using that eye for so many years my brain had been suppressing

I was constantly running into walls I couldn't go up and downstairs I would trip over my own feet

and I was doing it five hours a day and not really seeing any difference and I am a very

religious person. And so if you don't like religion, you probably won't like this next part

but I think most people do more than you think. Um, I definitely was praying about this. Like

what can I do? Like, I want, I need my vision to be better. Cause I was at the point where I wasn't

driving at all at night. I wasn't, um, even with both eyes, even when I wasn't patching, I didn't

feel like I could drive at night. I just, I could just feel my whole visual system was deteriorating

and I just, I knew it was going worse and I was really afraid I was gonna go blind in my right eye

That was my biggest fear at that time. And so I knew I needed to do something

and I was like, patching isn't really working. I don't know if surgery is gonna make a difference

And so I'm praying, what should I do? What should I do? And I, in October of 2018

there was a conference for my church and one of our leaders got up

It was our prophet, Russell M. Nelson, and he got up there and he was giving a challenge

And I still remember exactly where he was sitting in the church. And he said, I want you to read the Book of Mormon

which is kind of like the Bible, it's scripture. I want you to read it by the end of the year

And, you know, they've given challenges like this before. And I was like, all right, I'll do the challenge

And I had this extra little inspiration come to me that I needed to do it while patching

and I just I heard this voice or just had this feeling if you do this with patching your eyes will be healed and I didn know what that meant and that a promise that I heard and I taken with me over the last four years and come back to that so many times

trying to have faith in that, right? That something, it will happen. And it didn't happen

right away. Definitely not on the timeline that I thought it would. The very next day I started

reading and it would take me about an hour. I did the math and I figured out, okay, I'm going to need

to read this many pages a day to finish by the end of the year. And because my right eye was so

bad, I really couldn't do much. It took me over an hour a day to read that, which with this

I would have probably been like more like 15 or 20 minutes a day. And I read and I read and I read

and I read and my eye would be so tired. It just was dying. And the patching was really bad

but I just kept working and working and working at it. And, um, a few weeks after I started

maybe a couple of months after I don't remember the exact date, I had this really amazing

experience. Um, I was worshiping at our temple and I was there and I forgot to patch that day

And I was like, I need a patch. So I just like covered my eye with my hand. Like I'm crazy

right? Like I do the weirdest stuff in public. Just don't mind me. So I was doing that and

I accidentally was like pushing on my eyeball and when I took my hand off um my vision in my good eye

was really blurry and I was all of a sudden able to see out of my right eye when my left eye was

open because I'd never had the ability to switch between eyes was always when my both my eyes were

open I was always using my left eye and completely ignoring my right eye and because the vision in

my good eye was blurry, I was able to like feel my right eye kind of take over. And then

and then my left eye would, and then my right eye. And I was like, oh my gosh, I am controlling

my right eye. Like I can control it. Like I know what those muscles are now

And so then I like couldn't do it anymore. And so then I like smashed my eyeball

I don't know what I did to myself, but I can't be too good. So anyways, I smashed my eyeball again

so that it's blurry in my good eye. And so when both my eyes are open, it made it easier for me to take over with my right eye

And so I was swapping back and forth. I remember getting home and running into my bedroom

where my husband was and jumping on the bed and I'm like, watch this. Because by the end of

I obviously didn't get very much out of going to the temple that day besides my eyeballs

But I came home and I was like, watch this. And I like switched from eye to eye

And he's like, cool. Like, I don't think he realized that I'd never been able to do that in my entire life

I was never, some people with strabismus can easily alternate between their eyes, but I

had never been one that was an alternating person with strabismus. And it was such a huge moment for me and just this boost that I knew that patching was helping me And I not here to say patching is the answer for everyone I don know if that like necessarily the same path I would have taken had I started right away with vision therapy

But for me, that was what needed to happen, right? That was just part of the journey

And it was amazing. I remember just feeling like this is happening

Like I'm fixing my eyes. Like this is going to happen. And I kept reading and reading the book of Mormon every single day

and I didn't have any more big moments. But I did have a little miracle

that I didn't know was a miracle at the time. And that was that I was really sick of patching

I couldn't stand it anymore, partly because I'm vain. And the patch, if I wore a sticker patch

then it would mess up my eye makeup and leave red marks around my skin

sometimes a rash. And if I used a patch that had a string, it would mess up my hair

or I couldn't fix my hair, you know, whatever. I couldn't dry. Like it was so annoying. It just

was, it's so inconvenient to patch. And so my husband came up with this idea, like, what if we

just get you a contact lens that like blocks the vision in your eye? And I actually just wrote an

article on the website all about this type of contact lens. And I think it's so fascinating

but they do exist. And so I started calling around these optometry offices. I'm like

I want like a black contact lens or something that blocks the vision for my eye. And they're

all like, why do you want that? And I would explain like I'm patching and I'm sick of patching. I just

want a contact lens so I don't have to worry about the patch. And they're all like, no, we don't

really do that. No, we don't really do that. I called a ton of offices and I finally got to one

and they said, you know, there's this like new office in town and I think they might be able to

help you. And so she referred me to the Idaho Vision Development Center and I called them and

And I started explaining what I wanted. And they're like, well, we don't do contacts here

And she's like, but what do you want it for? And I started explaining it. And she's like, oh, that's what we do here

And I was like, what do you mean? And she started explaining, you should come in for a free consult

And I was like, I don't know, if you can't give me the contact, I don't know

And I had no idea what vision therapy was. And all my searching the internet

I don't know how I had never come across vision therapy, but I never did

And so I decided to schedule this appointment and was like, I don't know, maybe I'll convince

him to get me the contact. And even in that appointment, I was like, so can you get me the contact so that I can

keep patching? And he's like, not patching, don't patch. Anyway, so he does the exam and this is the vision therapy office, just to be clear

And it starts out like a normal optometry appointment. And I was like, okay, yeah, so what are you going to do

Tell me that I can see fine. and he didn't. He was like, yours is a really severe case

I don't know if I can help you. And I was like, well no, I have good vision

everyone tells me I don't need glasses. And he's like, no, but he has some major problems

And he did a bunch of tests and different things with me that actually for the first time in my life helped me understand what was going on with my vision He explained that I don see in 3D He explained that my eyes were completely working

independently of each other. I kind of knew that but I didn't really fully understand it and

I remember thinking he did this one test with red and green glasses

and I could feel my eyes switching from my left to my right. It was the Worth Four Dots

Anyways, it's a suppression test to see if you're using both eyes. And when he did that, I could feel my eyes switching

I'm like, how are you doing that? Where did you get these red and green glasses? What do they do? I had a million questions

because I'd been trying to figure out how to get my eyes to work and I could feel that something was different

And I knew I needed to do something with vision therapy. And that is when it began

That was when I started doing vision therapy. I didn't start right away because he did the full testing

And then he told me how much it was gonna cost and my jaw fell to the floor and it was like people pay for this

This is insanity. I will do it on my own. Thank you very much

So obviously I bought my own glasses and I bought Amblyoplay and I did all these different things trying to figure it out on my own

I continued patching I finished reading the Book of Mormon like two days early

I didn't have the miraculous change that I was hoping for there was this little part of me that

thought as soon as I flip the last page my eyes are going to be aligned miraculously and that was

the miracle that I wanted and that's not what happened and now looking back I can see the

miracle was one gaining control over my right eye and two finding vision therapy and and it wasn't

that my eyes will be healed right then, but that they can be healed eventually

And that eventually I will get that vision. And my vision is so much better now

I could consider myself healed now, but I also think I can get my vision even better

So this is that beginning part of my story. And I have other videos

about like the first 18 months before surgery and then my surgery videos

and vision therapy after surgery. So if you wanna know more and what happened

and how I started Vision Therapy, you can go check it out in those videos

This just kind of catches you up to how I got to where I am today

So if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out

You can email me, melissa at strabismusolutions.com. You can go to my website

You can schedule a consult with me and we can talk about your situation

and what might be a good option for you. And I just hope that you're able to find answers

and know that there are so many options out there. You just got to keep looking for them

And that's what I found is that I had to keep pushing and fighting to get a solution

but there was a solution and you can find it too. So I will see you in the next video

and let me know if you have any questions