Experience of Space

       I had my therapy session on wendsday this week, since they are closed for my usual session on friday. I had thought that it was amazing enough that I was able to put pegs into a rotating peg board using only my weak eye. The peg board has the letters of the alphabet randomly placed at different angles all over the board. The goal is to place the pegs into the board in alphabetical order then take them back out in alphabetical order. I was able to do both using only my weak eye. It was amazing, especially since only a month ago I could not read anything with my weak eye, let alone track moving letters on a spinning board.
       But the most amazing thing that happened in therapy this week happened during a tracking exercise. My therapist holds a gold ball on a silver stick and I follow it with my eyes. He was commenting on how my weak eye no longer jerks when it's tracking something. I could feel the difference, it is somewhat difficult to explain. There used to be this pulling, halting sensation in my left eye when I moved it to look at something. I had not noticed it too much, until it stopped doing it. Now, I can tell a huge difference! This, however, is not the most amazing thing. While my therapist was moving the ball toward and away my face, instead of seeing one and a half balls, like I usually do, the ball turned into one and I had the most bizarre sensation of roundness while looking at the ball, and the room expanded outward from my body. For half a second, I had depth perception.
       For those of you that do not know what it is like to not have depth perception, I want you to take a picture of a room of your house, print it off, then stand in the same spot you took the picture in. Look at the picture, and then look at the room. Without depth perception, I see the room as a flat object, like a picture. It's like standing inside of the picture. You are not part of the picture. You do not fit into the flat space. You are just stuck in the middle of it. Flat pictures surround you as you move through the world. That is the best way that I can describe it.
        For those of you that do not have depth perception, I want you to go into a space that you are familiar with. Preferably a small room, that you can reach around in and touch things. Perhaps a bathroom. Close your eyes and picture the room in your head, slowly reach out. Think carefully about how far you are reaching. How does reaching out to the sink relate to reaching the mirror or wall. Do not use your eyes to tell you what the space looks like. Use only your brain and let it tell you how the things in the space are related to each other. Stay concious of the open space, and how it radiates out from where you are standing. That is the best way I can describe to you what it is like. To see it, is completely different, but to understand the feeling of space that is the only way that I can think to describe it to you.

Eye Stretches

         Everyone should do them. Look as far as you can in each direction and hold for three seconds. It has really helped reduce eye strain for me. It's good for everyone to do. Have to wait to pick someone up? Two, three minutes of eye streches. Cooking dinner and waiting for something to get finished? Do some eye streches. Waiting for your kids to get out of the bathroom? Eye stretches. Anyone that has to work on a computer or with fine detail for an extended period of time should definetly consider eye stretches. My eyes used to ache and become fatigued after an hour or two of working on the computer. By the end of a term paper, I would be squinting out of tiny slits just to keep the words in focus, but I noticed a difference after a couple of weeks of doing stretches five nights a week. Now I can work for hours if I need to without getting a headache or everything becoming blury. It only takes 2 to 5 minutes, depending on how much time you want to devote to it, and the benefits are fantastic.

Thus far

     It has been a set of long weeks filled with finals, illnesses, last minute exams before finals, and other issues. Therapy has continued to amaze me. For the first time in my life three weeks ago, I was able to read letters with my left eye. I could not pinpoint where they were I could only pick out a few letters on a sheet of paper that has collumns of them. The next week I was able to catch a ball back and forth between my hands using only my left eye, although my eye still lagged behind the ball a bit, I was able to keep up enough to keep catching the ball. I was also to take the letter chart and read a series of letters and tell exactly which row those letters were in. This past week, I was able to start at the begining of the alphabet and find the letters on a peg wheel using only my left eye, I was able to reach m before getting confused (with n).

      I was able to trick my therapist at a point. He thought that I had some depth perception because I was using a stick with three colors on it to bat at a ball hanging from a string and I was able to keep the rythmn and force consistant. I had only missed the ball a couple of times. But the whole time I was using the rythmn to help me focus on keeping my force the same when hitting the ball. I was using the string to judge the distance between the ball and me and the floor. As long as I kept my arms at the same angle and the force on the ball consistant, I would be able to keep hitting the ball. It really made me think about how I make up for my lack of visual depth. I've stopped and thought about it more over the past couple of weeks. I realize that I use angles and lines, like a painter does when mimicking depth on a flat canvas. I use these tricks to try and position myself in the world.

     I need to speak with my doctor thought, I am not sure if it is the stress of finals week. (I've been starting at the computer a lot, and trying to re-read math notes) but the vision in my right eye goes out of focus. It has only done it a couple of times and I believe it has all been during the week before finals and this week of finals. The doctor had told me that I would get to a point where my doiminate (right) eye would weaken in a sense in order to allow the weak (left) eye to take up the slack. I go in tomorrow, so I will find out then what I should do. The doctor had lead me to believe that this would not happen until more the middle of my treatment, but according to my therapist, I am moving along at an impressive rate.