I'm still alive!
But I haven't done much vision therapy over the past few years. I meant to. But life got complicated and I lost momentum. And I was living abroad for a while, too, so that made things hard. And blah blah excuses.
I'm starting to get my passion back, though. I've had some time off work, and I've spent the past 5 months learning computer programming, developing some vision therapy computer games, and trying them out with patients at my vision therapist's office. It's been really awesome. Eventually I'll release the game out into the world, and hopefully make some more as well. Stay tuned. :)
For those who are curious - this is the current status of my vision:
I still don't see in 3D.
I can straighten my eyes at will and point them at whatever I want. Which, for me, is awesome. I've met patients at my vision therapist's office who have much better prognoses than me - e.g., they've never had any surgeries, they have quite a bit of depth perception in certain situations, etc. BUT they don't have as much conscious control over their eye muscles as I do. So that makes me feel special. And I can straighten my eyes out for pictures / first dates, so that's useful.
I still have some suppression, which allows me to function in the 2D world.
I'd say that my biggest obstacle is that my brain just doesn't "get" it, yet. I can overlap the input from both eyes - but it just looks like two slightly different superimposed pictures, fighting for dominance. For other people, two overlapping, slightly different inputs produces depth magic. But for me, no magic. Will it ever happen? I don't know!
Hi Josh!
ReplyDeleteGlad to read you back, your blog is the granddad of all strabismic blogs!
I wondere if you've tried "object array stereograms", there's a web site called colorstereo that has got several.
I've developed a technique for seeing them that has helped me and others (esotropes) to experience depth with stereograms for the first time.
I can talk about it in another comment.
Also, I've started a community on Google Plus, called "Strabismus and Amblyopia" (can't post links on Disqus).
Lately we've been talking about a Tetris game to use with filtered lenses and I'm personally learning WebGL, it can output stereo 3D images to 3D TVs.
If you have time if would be very interesting to hear about your work developing software for this purpose, I'd love to help
Dude! Break out the Brock and get yer 3D on, I miss this blog.
ReplyDeleteI am reaching a stopping point with traditional vision therapy as well.
ReplyDeleteThere are different ways to look at strabismus. One is a purely eye problem and another is using a multimodal approach.
Our bodies are often misaligned due to the eyes being misaligned. Physical misalignment makes it harder to correct eye misalignment. We have head tilts, neck and shoulder tilts, hip tilts and pronated/supranated feet. Plus we maybe hyper or hypotonic (spastic or floppy). Correcting these problems at the same time, you correct the eyes gives the eyes a more stable and aligned platform to work with. Physical therapy, massage therapy, chiropractic therapy have all helped. I have done physical therapy which looks at balance problems from a developmental approach as well as standard physical therapy designed to strengthen core muscles and realign the neck. Myofascial release massage is helping too.
Another thing that has helped tremendously is neurofeedback. THose of us who tend to be overfocused have a bit of anxiety and those who are underfocused are too relaxed. I would be a bit picky about the practioner as there are many doctors getting into neurofeedback who aren't trained. But it has helped a lot.
You can read more about my story if you google Journey Through The Cortex.
Very nnice blog you have here
ReplyDelete