PART 2: Tennis. The Strabismus World Transformed Through Vision Therapy and Straight Eyes

Hi, my name is Melissa Daniels and I have Stripismus and that is when your eyes don't work together

Your brain doesn't know how to use what's coming in from both eyes and so a lot of times your eyes are not straight

This is the second video in a series of videos I'm doing to help people understand what it's like living with Stripismis and then the difference it can make when you do vision therapy and surgery to make your eyes straight and help them work together

My eyes are still not perfect, but they are so much better and I have had so many gains

Today I'm going to talk to you all about the difference that having straight, high-functioning

eyes has on playing tennis and pickleball, which they're not the exact same, but I've experienced

the same benefits in both of those. So I was never an athlete. I never played any sports in high

school or anything like that, and then I married an athlete. And so now, now

I wanted to be able to hang out with him and so I started trying to learn how to play different sports and

tennis was one that I tried to learn and I could do okay. I'm really I'm good at being aggressive and

running and trying to hustle but what would happen is I would hustle to where the ball was and then I would whiff

and so whiffing is when you go to hit the ball and the ball goes past you so you just totally miss it

I would just happen over and over again and I get so frustrated and people would say keep your eye on the ball and I be like I don know what you mean like how can you keep your eye on the ball because I felt like the balls were moving really fast like they were just zooming past right these balls were just

flying past me like how in the world could you keep your eye on that ball and it was something that

I didn't understand I did okay though like I practiced I got some muscle memory and I was actually

able to play tennis kind of um we took tennis lessons and

And I actually even played in a tournament, like the very beginner, beginner level tournament

It was, I didn't win. I think I, like, lost the first game

But anyways, I was, like, okay enough. I could, like, kind of hit it back and forth as long as I wasn't playing with somebody

really good. But I still with it quite a bit. And I still was never keeping my eye on the ball

I was just kind of like sometimes just move. I don't know

Trying my best. So then I started vision therapy. and I actually got a lot worse

If you can believe it, for about a year, I couldn't play tennis at all

I mean, I could, but it was like, instead of the out of every 10 whiffing three or four

I was whiffing like seven or eight. I was getting a lot of double vision

I just could not play tennis. And so I was, like, I knew that in vision therapy

a lot of times, you will see results in progress go down at first

and before you see the improvement. Because what was happening is, before I was only using one eye

I was completely suppressing my right eye. It was over here not doing anything And so the whiffing and not being able to watch the wall was because I was only using one eye But when I got both eyes working they didn know how to work and play nice together yet And so that was making it even worse because my two eyes were it was almost like they were fighting against each other

So now that my eyes are coordinating together better and I'm able to use both eyes, they're not fighting against each other as much

They still do a little bit. I am able to have so much more success with a tennis or pickleball, whatever one of those

racket sports I'm playing. The two main ways that I see difference is I don't whiff it anymore

I'm still old. I'm still not like this agile athletic machine, right? I haven't like changed

my body makeup, but if I get to the ball, I hit it almost every time. I almost never whiff it anymore

So out of maybe 100, I'm only whiffing it, I don't know, five times maybe

I mean, you still do. Everyone whiffs it sometimes. But like way less frequently

You know, I'd gone my whole life with people telling me, keep your eye on the ball, keep your eye on the ball, and I just couldn't do it

And I get it now. I can watch that ball. And instead of the ball whizzing past me and being a blur, it's like I make the ball go into slow motion

when I that ball is slowly coming towards me it like my whole peripheral opens up and I can just feel the ball moving through space instead of just this blur so it it huge like you can even compare the difference And that just something really small right It just tennis it just watching the ball

but that huge difference, for me, it's awesome because I like to play tennis and I play tennis with my husband

And now it's not as painful for him to play with me. It's actually fun

I am going to keep making these videos. So keep watching for them on Fridays

as I am going to be. keep sharing the difference that vision therapy has made for me

And if you want to learn more, if you are interested in starting vision therapy

in investigating, you don't, you know, you don't have to commit. You can find an office close to you

I can help you with that. I do consults. If you go to Strabismas Solutions.com slash consult

you can meet with me. I can kind of help you understand the whole process

I can help you find an office and go through all of that. And if you're already in vision therapy

and you are wanting that feeling of the ball flying through space in slow motion

and expanding your peripheral, definitely go check out learn.stramasmosolutions.com where I have a course called mastering peripheral

that can help you learn that skill and expand on what you're already doing in vision therapy

So I'm super excited. I hope more people, my goal is to help

as many people as possible achieve these results that I've gotten, because it's so impactful in your life

So have a good one and I'll see you in the next video