Lifesaver Card

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Permalink Reply by Greg Voth on July 31, 2012 at 9:39pm

The lifesaver card is hard for me when converging but not diverging. Perhaps it's because of my 60 year old eyes, but I have a hard time seeing the lettering on the card so I don't get all the cues and virtual images created.

Permalink Reply by Kathe Rowe on July 31, 2012 at 10:51pm

Thanks Greg, I'm just a few years behind you. It is also hard to get all the cues looking through my trifocals. :)

Permalink Reply by Robert Connoy on August 5, 2012 at 12:11am

I am able to do the lifesaver card pretty easily now.  I feel that in my situation the specific exercises that led me to this ability were the brock string and the sliding tranaglyph.  I don't see the sliding tranaglyph discussed much, but for my situation I feel strongly that this is what  had  the most immediate impact on my ability to increase my conv / div ranges and eventually free fuse shapes like on the lifesaver card.  Of course the brock string helped with suppression.  When I first started to do the lifesaver card I saw the red and green as "swirling" around the circles, eventually the color became more of a solid blend of the two colors.  If you are not using the sliding tranaglyph, just for reference there is a pic here, it is right above the glasses - http://www.bernell.com/fullsize/3247/320 obviously I have no idea if this would be an appropriate exercise for your situation.  Incidentally, my therapist did not introduce the lifesaver card until I had been doing stationary tranaglyphs, sliding tranaglyph, and brock string for quite some time already.  Hope this is helpful.

Permalink Reply by Kathe Rowe on August 5, 2012 at 8:12pm

Thanks, I recently have started using a tranaglyph. In your link above I see the eccentric circles cards that I just started using a few weeks ago. I'll keep working on those and the brock string. Maybe a few more months and I can fuse the red and green on the lifesaver card. :) This stuff sure takes a long time!

Permalink Reply by Robert Connoy on August 6, 2012 at 12:01am

One thing I realize more and more is there is an extremely wide variety of experiences that people can have in VT.  I made very rapid progress with fusion and in fact I saw depth in the amblyoscope the very first time I walked in for an evaluation (I left that appointment stunned!).  I can see depth in the mirror stereoscope and sometimes with the bernell-o-scope as well as fuse some difficult targets, yet the rope and clown vectograms are flat as a pancake against the wall, and I have never seen any 3D in real life.  I certainly cherish those milestones, but it has been easy to become impatient at times. 

Permalink Reply by Greg Voth on August 5, 2012 at 7:55am

I used something similar. Backlit pairs of transparencies that could be slid left and right for convergence and divergence work... The overlays were 5" x 7" or so. I always blank on the name of that apparatus. I find convergence work with lifesaver cards is tough with progressive or trifocals lenses. I'm not able to read the small letters and get the convergence benefits others do.

Permalink Reply by Robert Connoy on August 6, 2012 at 1:13am

Interesting about the progressive lenses making it more difficult. My prescription should include a progressive bifocal, but the correction is very mild.  The therapist recommended that I skip the progresssives and just go with the prism correction and +1 for reading.  I recently had a 2nd pair made with a slight vertical correction in one eye in addition to the horiz correction I had before, the result is I get slightly better depth on the stationary tranaglyph cards.

Permalink Reply by Greg Voth on August 6, 2012 at 6:18am

Throught VT I didn't have to wear prisms in my glasses. Decades ago, right out of college (when my strabismus was re-diagnosed as an adult), an optometrist gave me a prism in my glasses that helped reduce stain and headaches. For years, with every eye exam, the doctors tried to push me to give it up. Eventually, one succeeded in removing it from my prescription without telling me - which, in a round about way led to my noticing vision issues. Initially I was quite upset, but it's removal led me to my VT, for which I'm truly grateful.