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Vision Therapy After Strabismus Surgery: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
40K views
Dec 14, 2022
In an effort to get lasting results, I chose to combine vision therapy with surgery. Just weeks after my eyes were straightened surgically, I started vision therapy and this video is all about that journey. I learned several important factors that kept me progressing instead of regressing, learn more in the video or in the full article. For the full article, go to https://strabismussolutions.com/postvt/ For a free "Eating For Stereopsis" Guide go to https://strabismussolutions.com/eat/ To schedule a consult with me go to https://strabismussolutions.com/consult/
View Video Transcript
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Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels and I have Strabismus
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Strabismis is when your eyes don't point in the same direction. Kind of like this picture
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That's what my eyes looked like three years ago. Since then, I've done over 100 appointments in vision therapy
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hundreds of hours in eye exercises, and I've had a Strabismis surgery
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And this video is going to be all about what it was like to do vision therapy after
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Sturbismus surgery and why I chose to combine surgery with vision therapy. You know, a lot of you
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are curious about that because we all hear the same stories that the results from surgery don't stick
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You get the surgery and your eyes are straight and then the eye drifts again. And I know for me that was
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one of my biggest fears and a lot of people with Strobismus have that same concern because
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why go through the trouble of getting a surgery if the eye is just going to go again? If you want to
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read the whole article you can go to my website at strabismus solutions.com
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slash post vt and I have all of the details of what vision therapy looked like
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after I had strabismus surgery but I'm going to go into part of that in this video
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so it was not I'd love to say that all my dreams came true with strobismos surgery
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I fully expected to have them like take off the gauze and to see in 3D and have my vision be perfect
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And that is not what happened. If you've seen my other videos, you know that it has been a rocky process
1:34
There's definitely been moments where I progressed and then regressed. And a lot of that has happened and I found some specific patterns that have helped me with the progress
1:46
and some patterns that have caused the regression. So let's dive in to what the therapy was like
1:55
Immediately following surgery, I started going to vision therapy like two weeks later
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I think that was too soon. If I could do it again, I would have probably waited four to six weeks at least just to give my eyes time to heal
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Just like if you get a knee surgery, you're going to struggle to walk. I struggled with basic eye movements with moving my eyes to the left and right, up and down, all of the things
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I couldn't hardly do it. They hurt too much, and my eyes had just lost a lot of their coordination, I guess
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So the first two months of therapy were really just trying to build me back up to where I was before I had the surgery
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I came back and I didn't really have very much stereo. I couldn't do the gem
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I couldn't see depth. It was very sad. I did a lot of crying and wondering if I'd made a huge mistake
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It was a hard time, but I decided to start doing vivid vision
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And this, that is an app that you can get on Oculus
3:00
Actually, you can get on any virtual reality headset through your optometrist. And you can check out this video all about what the vivid vision is like But I will tell you that I started doing that and it made a huge difference I also started eating really healthy and when I started doing that I noticed my
3:18
I got my vision back way faster. I just started progressing really fast, and I got closer to where
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I was before surgery. It's still very different, because before surgery, I had exotropia
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After surgery, I had esotropia, so there were some differences that were just going to be different
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They're different today, you know, 18 months later. They're still different just because now my eyes are in a different position
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But I got back to like closer to where I was before surgery
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I even saw the fly, the stereogram of the fly and the wings were floating at the eye doctor
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And it was so cool. So I started gaining back that stereo vision after a few months
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It was probably two to three months where I, it was like, I had started over completely and had to relearn everything
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I learned it way faster, but it still took a long time. After that, that was the progress part
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We had some family stuff happen, and I had to take my attention off of vision therapy
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I was really scared. My little girl was very sick, and I started eating terrible
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and not doing as much therapy and went downhill real quick. Then I got all that taken care of, got back on track, and started taking off again
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An important part of my post-surgery therapy was using glasses with prism
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So prism basically takes what you're looking at, and if your eyes aren't pointed the same
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direction, it moves the image so that both eyes are looking at the same thing
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So you can put those two images together and see single instead of double
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And that was a huge part of my therapy. We tried to wean me off of the prism
5:09
So I started with a 10 prism on my right eye. And then after a few weeks, I kind of built up again
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And then we moved it down to an eight. And then we moved it down to a six. And then I would work for a few weeks until I was seen at the same level
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And then we would move it down. And when I say we, I mean my doctor, Dr. Dan. And he would, you know, decide when it was time
5:31
We had a whole chart. It was very exciting. And I was just making these huge gains
5:36
huge gains and the prisms were really making a difference and then all of a sudden that just
5:41
stopped at four. I got to the four prism and it was just I couldn't get lower than that
5:48
It became summer break. I decided to take the summer off of vision therapy kind of. I still went
5:55
in once a month. I still did a lot of home exercises. I was still doing vivid vision, but I wasn't
6:00
doing it every day. It was more like a couple times a week and I wasn't eating healthy at all
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And it just, at the beginning of summer, like, I was, like, amazed
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All the trees were beautiful. My 3D was getting better. I remember looking at grass
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And I was, like, using a saw. And everything seemed so fantastic
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And I thought I don even need to go back to therapy after summer I doing so good But what I noticed that therapy is you know if I work really hard this week next week my vision is improved
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Even if that week, I'm not doing anything. My vision is still improved. And so that was the case
6:38
I'd worked so hard in March, April, May. I was seeing those results in the first half of the summer
6:45
and so I thought I'm doing fantastic, but as I wasn't doing much during the summer, I saw that result the second half of the summer in the beginning of fall
6:56
And, whoops, things got really terrible. Can I say terrible? I hate to be depressing. It really, it's okay
7:10
So I had a progress revisit and there just was no change
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You know, I'd made certain amount of progress and then it just had kind of stopped
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And I was so frustrated and I was ready to quit. I told my optometrist, look, I can't keep pain for this when I'm not making any progress
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So either something has to change, we have to make a change in the therapy. Something has to change or I have to be done
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And I wasn't like trying to threaten them, but I was just like logical. like this isn't working
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And so we had a little heart to heart. He committed to rewatching all of Dr. David Cook's lectures on Strabismiss
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which David Cook is like a great teacher. I committed to trying to make small changes
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I committed to not eating sugar and going back on my healthy eating diet
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If you want to know what I eat, I made a whole guide because I get asked so much
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So if you go to Strabismos Solutions.com slash eat, You can get my free guide
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It's completely free and it's beautiful. So you can even print it out and put it on your fridge
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But it goes through what to eat, how it affects your vision
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and like the process that has made such a big difference for me. So anyways, we both kind of made these commitments and then decided we were going to give
8:27
it like one last big push. And I paid for the next 10 visits and that was the plan
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And things started happening really quickly. and we changed the prism in my glasses instead of having the stick on prism that you could change
8:43
we i got like a prescription to just get the prism put straight into my glasses so that the
8:50
glasses were clear and my right eye started working again and those issues all went away
8:57
i started eating made a huge difference i started taking zoloft um it's an antidepressant
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which i didn't think i needed because i've never considered myself depressed or
9:08
and it was actually for anxiety. And I never thought I had anxiety
9:12
But anyways, you don't need to hear the whole story about it. But basically, I thought I had a heart problem because my heart wouldn't stop racing at night
9:20
when I was trained to sleep. And my doctor was like, why don't you try the Zoloft
9:26
And I was like, isn't that for depression? And they're like, yeah, but I think you have anxiety
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And I was like, no, I don't. I think you do. Anyways I tried it Obviously it fixed the heart racing but also my vision just took off I think it helped relax my brain or something I don know But between the diet the new prism
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glasses, the Zoloft, me studying the Bates method, things have just been taking off and I'm slowly improving
9:53
I feel like I'm using both my eyes so much more frequently. I don't even need glasses anymore
9:59
I don't use any prism. I was done. wearing those glasses by the end of December. I've maybe worn them in 2022, two or three days
10:09
Like when I have, I don't get any sleep or I'm really sick or something. Sometimes I'll get
10:14
some double vision when I'm driving and I'll have to wear glasses then. But other than that
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I don't need the prism anymore. I am, am my perfect, or is my vision perfect? Totally no. No
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I still have a long ways to go. It's a lot to teach my very stubborn brain to use both
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all the time and to believe in the space and the depth that I'm seeing. It's been a huge process
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and it's not over, but I'm getting so much closer and as I've been consistent with these changes
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I haven't had those regression, the regression cycle hasn't been coming up as much. Like maybe I regress
10:54
for a day or two, but not these like horribly like, you know, one month regressions and
11:00
things like that. So surgery was awesome at getting my eyes close to being aligned
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Vision therapy is what is helping them stay aligned, helping my brain learn to use both eyes
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so that my brain wants to keep my eyes straight. When I'm having double, my brain wants to just
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move my eye, I guess it moves it this way, move my eye out of the way so that I don't have to worry
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about seeing double. So vision therapy has made all the difference for me. I wouldn't have
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ever done surgery if I wasn't going to do vision therapy with it because there's no guarantee
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that the surgery is going to last. And I still don't have that guarantee, but the odds are way
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higher that there's going to be success if my brain can use both eyes together. There's tons of research
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that shows the people who are able to gain binocular vision, which is both eyes working together
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after surgery, have a way higher success rate than those whose eyes aren't working together
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So I definitely recommend vision therapy. If you're going to have surgery, doing vision therapy in conjunction with it
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I think it works so beautifully together. And if you want to know more about this, if you want to talk to me about your specific condition
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you can go to my website, strabismasolutions.com slash consult, and you can schedule a Zoom call with me
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which is so fun. I love getting to know all of you. It's been super interesting to hear about people's different cases and help them
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figure out what the right path for them is and it's not the same every time some people surgery is the
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answer some people it's x y or z so it's really fun and interesting to meet other people with
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strabismus so hopefully i get to talk to you and please subscribe to this channel so that i can get
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to my goal of 1,000 subscribers before my birthday it's in one month we got one month let's do this
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