Sessions 49-50
I've had five months of vision therapy. 50 sessions to date, with 51 and 52 coming tomorrow. When I first started, the scheduled 64 sessions seemed a nearly unfathomable number of roundtrip visits to Fair Lawn, NJ. For one thing, I didn't like driving... I do now. I wonder what it will be like to not have to go to VT. I will miss that drive. I will miss my Family EyeCare family. They are all very sweet and engaging but I don't know if they truly know how appreciated they are. Before each appointment I get a call reminding me of the next session (thank you for that!) and each time I feel like I'm speaking to a good friend.
In the last sessions, I learned a bit more about my vision. My right eye still attempts to be the dominant eye - my left still has a tendency to turn in ever so slightly from time to time, limiting my stereo experience. I learned that I need to focus my attention to my left eye, this seems to allow my eyes to correct themselves, making my right eye less dominant and brings me into a swimming 3-D shortly after. It works. I was in wonderful 3D most if not all of the day today.
I did some errands mid afternoon. As I walked the sidewalks, I concentrated my gaze more left eye centric and enjoyed deep stereo. In my posts, I've noted that night time is easier for me to see in 3D, so being able to continue seeing in stereo with good midrange depth throughout the day today was fantastic. I walked under a small tree as the branches and leaves danced around me (with me?) so playfully that I stopped and thanked them. Perhaps this day made my walk with Lucky tonight seem more special. The trees seemed more expressive, more textured. I saw the night street at a greater distance and depth than I have before. Yet, for all the depth and distance, I'm still amazed how much closer things seem in stereo. In flatland my surroundings are so much more distant.
Some observations:
This week I read a script to my wife, though I much prefer allowing her to read things to me as Robin has a wonderful reading voice. After I read the first five single-spaced pages, we both noticed that I was reading quite fast and keeping my place very well. In my life pre-VT, I would constantly lose my place while reading, so I tended to read somewhat slowly. I would paraphrase what I glanced on the page as I hastily tried to find my place. When stumbling through a script you can miss something important. AS my reading tends to put my wife to sleep, I had good comprehension of what I had read and caught her up on the storyline and many of the details this morning.
Tonight I was in our bathroom, where we have an artificial plant in a vase on our vanity. The tendrils drape the vase in long arcs. As I stood there I was able to reach out and touch the very ends of a few of the leaves deliberately and delicately, easily locating them in space, barely moving them as my finger contacted them. Again, I observed how much closer things seem around me when I'm in stereo.
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Comment
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Comment by Benjamin Frost on October 6, 2011 at 11:29pm -
Susanna, I don't know if I had perfect binocular vision before LASIK. All I know is that my left eye didn't turn all the way into my nose. If I did have perfect 3D vision, I don't know, cuz I took it for granted.
I had LASIK to correct simple near sighted astigmatism. After my left eye turned in a lot! I know I had mild strabismus as a kid, but never had anything that extreme. As a child I got glasses, which corrected the strabismus, but I don't know if I used my eyes together properly.
The strabismus I experienced after LASIK was devastating. Really bad strabismus. The physical pain of headaches and mental fatigue, leading to emotional pain. Yuck! hehe!
I'm getting better now though! :-)
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Comment by Susanna Z on October 6, 2011 at 1:49am -
Greg, That was a great letter and response from Dr. Mozlin. She brought up a great point that it's hard for people who have seen their whole lives in 3D to imagine what it's like for those adults who see anew to re-experience the world. She mentions the Grand Canyon while I stare at the wall and I am not even in full stereo yet! Imagine how much I will be staring once I am in stereopsis:)
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Comment by Greg Voth on October 5, 2011 at 5:50pm -
Susanne: I managed to get the Eccentric circles to work when converging today, thanks to Jen combining the exercise with a Brock string. Ironically, just visualizing a point on the Brock string sans beads, was all it took. It's hard for me to hold the 3 images for a great length of time (diverging is, however, a piece of cake), but I did come into VT with a convergence deficiency. My drive home was, again, in a very deep stereo.
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Comment by Greg Voth on October 5, 2011 at 5:44pm
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Dr. Rochelle Mozlin (SUNY) asked if she could publish my email thanking her for referring me to Leonard Press. Her response was very touching. Here's the link:
http://covdblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/leaving-flatland/
I had to laugh at the reference to my age. Thankfully, I don't look or feel 60, but my achievements at 3 months shy of that milestone are pretty important to our cause. And, if I can do it, you can do it.
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Comment by Susanna Z on October 5, 2011 at 5:29pm
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Greg: You are doing eccentric circles without special glasses? WOW!
Benjamin: I have been in flatland all my life. When I first found out about 3D via the article "Stereo Sue" by Oliver Sacks in The New Yorker, I was stunned. I had no idea I had been missing something and I suddenly understood why I couldn't park cars so well. However, my parallel parking skills are better than some 3D people I know:)
Benjamin, wouldn't you know if you had 3D vision prior to your LASIK in 1999? If you did and you lost it than you would have experienced a change in vision.SUSANNA
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Comment by Dr. Leonard J. Press on October 5, 2011 at 3:26pm -
"I will miss my Family EyeCare family. They are all very sweet and engaging but I don't know if they truly know how appreciated they are. Before each appointment I get a call reminding me of the next session (thank you for that!) and each time I feel like I'm speaking to a good friend."
Thanks so much for your kind words. Greg. I'll share them with the staff, and it's been a joy for us to work with you as well!
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Comment by Sergey Orshanskiy on October 3, 2011 at 5:46pm -
"In the last sessions, I learned a bit more about my vision. My right eye still attempts to be the dominant eye - my left still has a tendency to turn in ever so slightly from time to time, limiting my stereo experience. I learned that I need to focus my attention to my left eye, this seems to allow my eyes to correct themselves, making my right eye less dominant and brings me into a swimming 3-D shortly after. It works. I was in wonderful 3D most if not all of the day today." --- that was exactly the case for me. If you read the first part of my blog, all the changes happened after somehow the dominance between my eyes switched and the right became dominant. I could do it before on purpose as well, but after the right eye got strong enough to challenge the left one, it was less than 24 hours until everything changed. Particularly I mean this post: http://see-movement.blogspot.com/2011/07/eccentric-fixation-and-eccentric-fusion.html
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Comment by Greg Voth on September 30, 2011 at 8:13pm
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The only stereo experience I had prior to beginning VT in May of this year was back in 1974. It was Andy Warhol's 'Frankenstein' and those two effects I saw came with an amazingly bad headache. From that point on I avoided 3D movies. No 3D for me in everyday life.
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Comment by Benjamin Frost on September 30, 2011 at 6:41pm
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Greg and Susanna, did either one of you have 3D stereo vision before? I am just wondering, because I'm pretty sure that I did.
I don't have the experiences that you both have with driving etc. I don't know if that is because I am not that far yet, or because I used to have 3D vision. From reading Sue's book, she says that there is a difference for people that have never had 3D before.
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Comment by Greg Voth on September 30, 2011 at 5:06pm
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I use them without the anaglyph glasses, which presents a wonderful challenge. I just went to Best Buy to view some 3D tv's... what fun!
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