Plateau

     My last therapy session was not much  to brag about. Nothing like the session before. I felt like I had not improved any and I was not doing as well as I had been the previous week. I've been frustrated over this since Friday. Phil tells me not to get so worked up about it, that I will continue to see improvement. I know that I will, that I will probably have to deal with moving at the speed that most other patients are moving at. There I was, speeding along, making fantastic progess. I did not stop to think what it must feel like to not be making such leaps in between sessions.
    I have been giving premission to do some of the activities that we do during my sessions in office, at home. So I will be working on setting that up this week before school starts back up. I hope that between full classes, Nyxie, research, and Phi Sigma that I will remain dedicated to the therapy program.

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.

First real session

    I had meant to write after each session, but I do not foresee that being the case. I was completely wiped out yesterday. My weak eye was so tired that it had drifted far to the outside corner of my eye socket. Usually, it does not drift that far. But fatigue makes the "eye turn" worse, and it was pretty terrible yesterday. I feel like the fact that I was so tired from that session yesterday was proof that work was actually getting done. This time I had to match lights to the letters that were pasted next to them on the star trek contraption. (I'll remember what it's called eventually and start using it's real name) Which, of course, I could not do with my weak eye, because I cannot read with it. I had to walk a straight line, heel to toe, which was difficult in itself. Then walk the line wearing prism lenses (angled lenses that cause your eyes to focus strangely...think drunk goggles). Then again with stronger prisms. I almost fell over quite a few times, and I thought I was going to get sick.
    A revelation struck me this session. My left eye sees fine, except for what I am focused on. Whatever I focus on, my brain doesn't fully comprehend and only wants to use the image supplied by my right eye. I have never had a way to describe it before, but now, through the use of bi-coloured lenses, I have been able to see what my brain tries to shut out the most. This makes me hopeful, because that means that my brain still receives all of the impulses sent by my weak eye and will not have to learn how to turn those impulses on, as with some patients.

Really?!

So my dad was my assistant yesterday. I had to do an activity using the awesome pirate patch. When I was done using only my weak eye, my own father said, "That was your strong eye right?" and when I told him no, he was surprised. Then we finished with eye stretches and dad said that while he could tell that my left eye doesn't have the range of movement that my right does, that the left eye had improved. So far so good.

Mr. Sulu...

    Therapy began yesterday. They are putting me through a series of exercises like eye stretches. Where I move my eyes without turning my head as far as I can turn them, and hold them there. This is to build up muscle strength around the eyes. I also have to do body lifts, where I lay on my stomach and lift different appendages and hold them in the air, this is supposed to get my brain and body to work together better. This will apparently help me become less of a klutz, I have my doubts... This is mostly home stuff though, that my lovely assistant Phil, has to help me with.
   The first day wasn't much really. I was given my binder, and had the different exercises and worksheets explained to me. I did discover, while having on what reminds me of old-school 3-D glasses, that my eyes seem to combine part of a picture, at least sometimes. My brain combines the periphery of what the weak eye sees, with what the dominate eye sees, only a little though. But the main object I'm looking at is either ignored through the weak eye, or shown, usually not in its entirety, slightly off to the right of what my dominant eye sees. It can be a little annoying since it's always changing.
    I also got to play on the set of Star Trek, but, unfortunately, the therapist is not William Shatner or George Takei. I was told to stand in front of this large grey contraption that had about 12 radials on it that had lights on them. It kind of looked like an unfinished outline of a bicycle wheel drawn onto a large grey box. A timer is then set on the box and a light will turn on. You push the light, it goes out, and another comes on somewhere else. You push it, it goes out, ect. You are supposed to see how many you can do in a given time. This is one of the pirate patch activities. I started with the weak eye. Switched to the dominant eye. Then used both eyes. I was in the high 60's almost 70's with the dominant eye. Stayed around 65 with both eyes. And my highest score with the weak eye, 24. There was one light in particular that kept giving me trouble. The bottom right light I could see, but I just couldn't pin point it. It was very frustrating, but I doubt Uhura started kicking the machinery on deck ...