GAINING PERSPECTIVE THROUGH VISION THERAPY
Part 13 of a series. Click here to start at the beginning or here to go to the previous post.
Do I have a right to be frustrated and angry?
Yep.
Am I going to walk around pissed off and feel like I’ve been done wrong?
No.
Why not?
Because both my vision therapist (Dr. New) and ophthalmologist (Dr. Old) believed they were doing their best. I get to choose the quality of my life and won’t leave it up to them.
I have no depth perception because my eyes don't work together. This means I can’t catch a ball, play tennis, and must be very careful driving. It also means so much more. It’s hard to describe living in a 2D world. There’s a dimension I don’t see or experience. It causes anxiety. It causes fear and confusion. It can make it difficult to trust.
Nine months ago, I learned that there was a possibility to gain depth perception through vision therapy. Although I’d been told by countless eye doctors over my lifetime that using my eyes together to gain depth perception was impossible, I now had glimmer of hope and believed it was worth a shot. The therapy began last December.
Last month, I innocently went to get my contact prescription checked with Dr. Old. When the technician asked how my monovision was going, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I’m not using monovision. I don’t want monovision! I never asked for monovision!!!
Monovision is a prescription for contacts that corrects one eye for near vision and one eye for far. I've been in vision therapy to get my eyes to work together. After 30 weeks of time devoted to vision therapy, I found out that Dr. Old had made a ‘tweek’ (her words) to my prescription last year which forced each eye to see differently from the other.
But I’m trying to get my eyes to work together! I want to have depth perception!
Monovision is unnatural. My brain and body won’t operate in unison with monovision. It’s a short-sighted solution (pun totally intended) to the aging eye which can’t focus quickly from far to near. It’s a way to eliminate the need for ‘cheaters’ (reading glasses you can purchase at the drug store for next to nothing). It's a way to let my eyes deny the reality of this aging process. It forces the eyes to work separately.
And it messed with my brain.
It’s nearly impossible to do vision therapy with monovision. As I’ve diligently done exercises to get my eyes and brain to work together for the first time in my life, the prescription I was looking through made it extremely difficult for my brain to catch on to what the exercises were trying to accomplish.
This is when I got angry and frustrated.
But I’ve done some thinking about this. I believe Dr. Old was doing what she knew best, based on what she believes about vision. She gave me a prescription that she thought was a good one. The fact, however, is it wasn’t right for me.
So many of us do what we think is the right thing but are messing it up for others. Most of the time, like Dr. Old, we don’t even know it. We do what we absolutely think is the best for others but sometimes it’s not. It's important to understand this so when things aren't working, we stay open to possibilities and hear what people around us are saying.
I’m going to move forward. There's been progress and I'm hopeful for the future.
My next blog will describe the amazing transformation that took place when I insisted on having a prescription without monovision.
Stay tuned!
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