In the begining...

    That is usually the best place to start. Well, I have Amblyopia Strabismus. Amblyopia is also known as "Lazy Eye." It is when the eye looses it's ability to see detail while the eye itself is in perfect condition. Strabismus is the technical term for "Crossed Eyes." I have been this way as long as I can remember. I was wearing glasses, before most children had even had their first eye exam. (This is where I tell parents that it is vitally important to get your children eye exams by the age of 1. There are doctors that will do it, you just have to find them. Doctors are apparently afraid of children...The American Optomentric Association recommends the first exam by 6 months.)
    When I was little, little enough that these are my first memories, all I remember is the world looking like a jumbled mess. I never knew where to step or if what I was seeing in front of me was really there. I hit my head and fell down a lot. I was not a graceful child. I ran into things, tripped over stuff that may or may not have been there. I was made fun of often by other children, family members, adults. I was called retarded, stupid, blind. No kid wants to play with someone that can't catch a simple ball.
     As I got older, my vision improved a little over time, mostly because my brain started to shut down what my left eye saw. There was less confusion, less objects that weren't there. I remember when my eye doctor first patched my dominant eye, the eye that allowed me to see. It was terrible, a nightmare. It was like trying to navigate a world that had invisible things in it. I was back to tripping and falling into things. I used to cheat, I'd go in the other room and take the patch off or I'd peel a corner up so I could look out it. Wearing the patch used to make me feel physically sick. Everything was distorted. But had I realized what I was doing, I'd like to think I would have just sucked it up and dealt with it. As far as I can tell, this was around age 4.
    Life went on. The eye doctor from my young childhood told my parents to forget the eye patch, and that by the time I was an adult they would be able to do surgery to fix the problem. So I continued to grow up, peers gradually stopped making fun of me so much towards high school, and I slowly learned tricks to deal with my vision, stopped falling down stairs all the time. All the while, waiting until I was old enough for my father and I to look into surgery. When we finally did, we found out that surgery would only fix my eye "cosmetically" At least I could look like everyone else, was what the doctor seemed to be saying. I didn't feel that was worth the cost and pain of eye surgery, so I never had it done.
   Then I learned about vision therapy while I was looking online, desperately searching for an answer because I was sick of the head aches, the random double vision, the eye fatigue. And then, I found my hope, after years of being told that I had none. Vision Therapy was proven to fix people like me, older than me, in ways that I had never even imagined. But, more of that later...