What I Gained in 18 Months of Vision Therapy and Why I Eventually Chose Strabismus Surgery

Hey it's Melissa. I have Sturbsmas. Even if my eyes look straight right now, this is what they

looked like three years ago. And a lot has happened between this picture and how my eyes look now

This video is going to be all about basically the process that I went through before and I ended up having

strabusiness surgery. So I went through vision therapy. I tried to do vision therapy on my own

I'm going to talk about the gains that I did make and then what ultimately

led me to decide that Strabismos surgery was also getting part of the process

Head over to Strabismiss Solutions.com slash pre-VT, and that'll give you the full article with all of these details

kind of the timeline and any details you would want to know. And I'm also going to ask you a favor

because my birthday is coming up on March 25th, and I am trying to get to 1,000 subscribers before that point

So do me a favor and hit that subscribe button if you like the content that I'm putting out. So to get started, I want to talk about the very

first part of my journey. And that was when I tried to do it by myself. I was having some major

vision problems. And I went to an optometrist and he said I could start patching. So I was patching

four to five hours a day. I was doing this while reading the Bible. I was reading scripture every

day for an hour with my bad eye, trying so hard to strengthen my bad eye. I knew that my eye. I

I was weak, but I didn't realize that my eyes weren't pointing the same direction

In the process of all of the patching, I discovered vision therapy, and that there was an actually

vision therapy office within like 30 minutes of my house. So I went in, had my appointment, realized it was like the most amazing thing in the world

and that this was finally an eye doctor who actually understood what I was going through

and could actually help me. And then he told me how much it cost, and I was kind of blown away and thought this is way

too expensive. There's no way. And so in the beginning, I just went in actually every six weeks

and he gave me little things to do to help build my foundation. So we were doing things with

primitive reflexes, tracking, just basic eye tracking. I was doing work with a red lens patch

and anti-suppression. I was doing amblyoplay, just trying to wake up. Because when I started

my right eye was out here. It was not working at all. It was

completely suppressing what was happening for my right eye, only using my left eye

And so I had to wake up my right eye to begin with. And so it was like messing with my

balance and all of that. But I tried to do it on my own. I was making up my own exercises

I was doing all sorts of things determined I thought I am a determined person I can do this on my own I don need to pay the money But after about eight or nine months my optometrist I was starting to get double vision and my optometrist basically said look if you want to do this on your own go do it on your own but I not supporting this anymore

He just was like, you're going to, it's going to make it worse. You're going to get double vision

If you want to do this, you either are coming in every week or you're not coming at all

And so it kind of gave me an ultimatum and I decided to go for it. And so we still call

compromised a little bit and I just went in every other week. For the first 10 weeks, I really saw no

progress. I'm going to show you what a vector graph is. I think I've showed in some of these videos

but this is a vector graph. So it's two cards. And so when you're wearing these glasses, it looks

like it's floating in the air. Right. Well, when I first went, I saw nothing. I would look at this

and I just saw one flat circle. I couldn't even see double vision, right? A lot of times people who don't

have good binocular vision, we'll see two, and their brain doesn't know how to fuse it into one

but I couldn't even see both of them, I just saw one. We would try all sorts of things. I would wear

glasses with prism, 35 diapters of prism, plus lenses, so this is like a plus two. We were using

plus 12, right? Is this looking cool enough yet? Plus the polarized glasses, and we would sit there

and they'd move it all over, and they'd be waving their hands, and the optometrist and the vision

therapist were in there at the same time, nothing, right? For 10 weeks. Well, I guess it was like

five appointments. And then finally, while I was wearing plus 12 lenses, this kind of thing, plus 35

diopter prisms and the polarized glasses, I saw a little flicker. I saw flicker forward. And my eyes

straightened for just like this moment and the optometrist was like, that's it, do it again

and it was so exciting. And I didn't get that back for a while

A few weeks later, I was able to see it at home with only a six and a half lens

And then by 28 weeks, after working on, I actually bought my own, because usually they're

only in the office, I bought my own and I worked with it every single day with all these lenses

And it got better and better. I was able to start seeing it come a little forward, go a little back

And by 28 weeks, I was able to see the vector graph without the help of a prism

and without the help of any plus lenses. And the depth I was getting still wasn't as good as it is today

I thought it was great back then, but now I realized that I was not all the way there

but I could definitely tell if the ring was floating in front or behind, you know, the plastic card or this little blue sticker

And so that was really an exciting time. And so, you know, that progress, like, oh, yeah

it seems fast as I telling you now but think 28 weeks that more than how half of a year that I spent on one exercise And we did a lot of other exercises but that how long it took for me to really see with stereo pretty consistently

It was about the same time that I experiencing 3D in the real world for the first time

I saw a flock of birds and all of a sudden it was 3D

and I still remember that and it still is like such a special thing to me because it was so amazing

and brought tears to my eyes. I knew that my brain was using both eyes and that happened around

20 weeks after starting my every other week vision therapy. You know, I'd done like eight months

before that, but that was just after vision therapy. By 30 weeks, I was starting to learn how to

straighten my eyes a little bit. They were getting a little straighter. I'll show a picture

to kind of compare, you can see that my one eye is starting to come in and I even started being

able to straighten them on command and they weren't necessarily perfectly straight, but they were

getting there, especially at near. At distance, I couldn't, but at near I was able to straighten my eyes

And about 36 weeks, this was in January 2020, my optometrist convinced me that weekly appointments

were going to make a really big difference. And so I started going in every single week and just

dedicated everything to vision therapy and took it so seriously I started doing like virtual reality

with optics trainer and was doing like a paid subscription at home I was doing the brock string and just

all these different exercises working really hard on improving my eyes working together because I was

able to start using them together I just couldn't do it at all distances I could only do it

you know up close and so I was like extending those distances and

and being able to straighten my eyes without straining. But that was kind of the problem that I was facing

Even as I kept doing therapy and I would make these small gains, the progress was so slow

So at this time, I was writing articles every single week about my vision therapy

The progress I was making, what homework exercises I was given, and all that's on my blog

But I was going through it and I'm realizing how many times I used the word for

I was constantly saying I can force my eyes straight and I was so excited about it

But I started to realize that I couldn't force my eyes for the rest of my life

Like sure, I could force my eyes straight. But once I was doing that, it was hard for me to maintain a conversation, do it while walking

definitely not while playing sports. Like it just took so much energy to straighten my eyes that I couldn't keep them straight

I ultimately decided to go with surgery So there was a couple major reasons that went into that First my optometrist who did my vision therapy and my ophthalmologist who I trust greatly he a super awesome guy Both of them

agreed that I'd made about as much progress as I was going to make with vision therapy on its own

And it was that if I got surgery, it was going to help me progress a lot faster and help me do it

with a more relaxed gaze. So I wasn't always straining to try to see better. That was like

one of the main reasons. I guess that and that combines with reason too

So one, because my doctors thought it was a good time. Number two, I wanted to be able to use both eyes and have 3D when I was relaxed

because I knew that it would be something that I could actually apply into my everyday life

not just straighten my eyes for a conversation or for a picture, but actually have my eyes be straight and have 3D all the time

And then the third reason, and probably the most important reason, is that I prayed about it and I am a religious person and I just felt like God told me that surgery

was going to be part of my process and I trusted that and just went for it. So between those three

things I went for it. I had surgery. You can see all of my videos about all the surgical process

and it got my eyes so much closer to being straight and I've still continued doing vision therapy after

and I can tell you, I can do it from a relaxed state now

I can see so much more depth. I thought I was getting amazing depth perception before

but it's so much more clear, and the stereo that I get is so much better now

It has made a really big difference. Are there things that have been harder? Yes, I don't feel like I can move my eyes out to the sides as easily

It's something I have to work on constantly, because I'm sure there's scar tissue and all sorts of other things

but ultimately overall it has been a huge positive in helping me get my eyes working together

and keeping them straight. This is totally possible for you too. Some people don't need surgery in the mix, right

Some people can do it all with vision therapy or some people just choose surgery because that's what they want to do

I don't know what the right answer is for you, but I do offer consults where people give me a lot of their background information

and where they're at, and I do a Zoom call, and we talk about where you are, where you can go

and what some of the potential solutions might be for you. So if you're interested in that, there's a lot more information at strabismusolutions.com

slash consult. And I'd love to work with you if that's something that you think would be helpful

If you're looking to straighten your eyes and learn to use both of them together

And that's all for now. Keep your eyes out for more videos coming every Friday, and be sure to like and subscribe