What is tunneling?

I had a guest vision therapist today at Dr. Magic's office. He taught me many things today. I will share them one blog post at a time. He told me that our bodies can only heal when they are in a safe space, a safe environment. If we are full of tension or are being subjected to unsafe conditions, we cannot heal. 

When I go to vision therapy, I love how supportive these folks are. They tell me to breathe. They constantly pay attention to my breathing. And my stress level. They tell me when to palm (to slow down my (trachea?)) to calm my breathing and help my body know it's in a safe place. Today, my vision therapist had me working with blocks. 

[The photo has disappeared. I will need to photograph it again at some point & replace the photo that was here in the original blog post.]

It was my task to line these up in a certain way, on this cork board. He was checking out my cross-body coordination, manual dexterity and some other things. When he had me stacking on the white blocks, he told me to "go faster." (I was doing a specific task, arranging the blocks.) 

 My breathing got faster and I felt pressured to perform well. He told me that my vision narrowed when I was searching for the correct "next block." This, he said, was tunneling. I was feeling frantic in my body and my vision narrowed as if I was looking through a cardboard tube. 

For the next half of the test, he had me doing the same thing. This time he told me I didn't have to rush at all. He told me to take my time. After I did one or two, he told me to try to take in the whole board instead of just scanning 1 block at a time. I gave myself permission to put the blocks on and straighten them as I did the exercise. 

After it was over, he asked me how it felt. "What was different?" He asked. I had felt more calm. He had kept pointing out for me to breathe (I love when they do that), and had helped me stay calm and focussed as I did the exercise. 

He then pointed out that my arms had been in constant motion pretty much. Whereas before, when I was tunneling and stressed, I kept stopping and starting. When I was calm and breathing and just trying to do a good job, but take my time at it, I was actually much more efficient. My body kept moving. 

The way he described it felt like a Thai Chi exercise - fluid movement from the center of our body. I don't know if that is how Thai Chi is spelled. If someone lets me know, I will fix it. I don't even know if that is the definition of it. But, it's how I understood what he was saying when he was talking about my constant, calm motion, as opposed to my frantic "start and stop" motion. 

As I remember to stay calm and teach my body that it's safe, I will be able to tunnel less, and be able to teach my brain how to sort things better. I will gain larger pictures instead of narrow pictures. And so many things should become a lot more clear and easier to understand. 

Thank you for following along on this journey with me. If you would like to order these blocks on Amazon dot com, this is what they look like. I will post a link when I find them on Amazon. I feel like these blocks would be a wonderful tool for a wide variety of people. They are versatile and can be used to do many kinds of tasks. I bet they would be great in a preschool or Kindergarten situation too.

 

High School Driver’s Education

In high school, a lot of people take a class called “Driver’s Education.” It’s a classroom setting, with a teacher and all your classmates. In the class, students are taught the differences between the lines in the road. We’re taught that a stop light means “stop,” even if you can go right on red - you stop first, then look. If no one else has right of way and the intersection is empty, you can proceed to turn right on red. Did you know New Jersey was the first state to say it was ok to turn right on a red light? My dad thought that was pretty cool, that New Jersey was progressive like that. 

One of the classroom tests we took that was self-directed, was a tool we used to determine our peripheral vision. The person taking the test puts their head in a little U-shape and looks straight ahead. Someone else starts moving little yellow discs - on one or the other side of you. The person taking the test is supposed to say “stop” when they first see these discs moving. 

My friend who was moving the disc got almost to my direct front of vision when I said, “stop.” She was pretty startled that I hadn’t seen it sooner. I was too. I was mad at her for moving it so slowly. 

I think the teacher called us to the front of the class at that point (we had all been taking different tests around the room and were reconvening). He told us we could finish doing the different tests later. Later, I saw what others had written on their papers in regards to the peripheral vision discs, and sort of averaged what a few of my classmates had written and fudged a reasonable number on my own chart. I figured I just couldn’t see the yellow on the disk because the paint had chipped off so it looked like the dull pewter color of the rest of the instrument. 

Well, I am now 47 years old and I went to my vision doctor. He was testing me in so many different ways, to determine what was wrong with my eyes. He used a silver rod with a gold ball at the tip of it. He used this rod for several different tests for me. He had put the rod down for a while and tested me in other ways. A bit later, he picked up a similar rod and held it just outside of my vision. I could see it, but it was clearly a silver ball on the rod, and no longer gold. I thought, “oh ,he has 2 of these rods for different tests.” 

He said, “tell me when this ball turns gold.” I thought, “what? What on earth does that mean? It will change color?” He started moving it from my left to the center of my vision. Suddenly, about 3 inches from the center of my vision, this silver rod with the silver ball on top - suddenly, the ball at the end was brilliantly gold! It shocked me. I had no clue it would suddenly be such a vibrant gold. I probably looked startled. I know I felt completely startled. I consider myself to be a connoisseur of color. And yet, I had completely missed that this bright, vibrant, gold ball was a bright, vibrant gold. I could have sworn it was a silver monotone pole nearly identical to the other pole I had been following with my eyes. I hope I have described this adequately. I feel like I have more words in my head that want to come out, but I can’t figure out what they might be. Hopefully you’ve understood me. Thank you for following this quirky journey the best you can.

The optometrist magician did this same test for me. He took the ball out of my vision to my left, and asked me, “when does it turn gold?” And, once again, I was completely startled when, about 3 inches from the center of my vision, it went from a dull gray / silver color to a vibrant, polished, gold ball. I even wondered if he had polished it a few minutes before, it was so shiny and bright. 

He told me this meant I have tunnel vision. No wonder, all those years ago, doing that test in Driver’s Education class, that I couldn’t see that girl doing the test for me, doing the peripheral vision until it was nearly in front of me. I have tunnel vision. 

I am 47 years old, and I just learned that I have tunnel vision.  

Am I Safe To Drive?

Note: I wrote this blog post before I got my new glasses.

Am I Safe To Drive?

I told someone that I was diagnosed with having tunnel vision. Their immediate reply was: “are you safe to drive?” 

I have been asking myself the same question since the moment Dr. Magic Optometrist told me, “you have tunnel vision.”

I know I have to turn my head and look very carefully when I am driving. I also know I have to leave large following distance compared to so many people. 

I mean, I have been driving for 31 years at this point. Am I safe to drive? Would the Department of Motor Vehicles have said to me: “you’re not safe to drive, you have tunnel vision.” 

I have been compensating for this for as long as I have been driving. Am I safe to drive? I don’t know. 

When I get my new glasses and they let me see in 3D, will they radically change how I drive? Will I be able to drive then? Someone I know is taking me to the appointment when I pick up my glasses, and I think it’s probably a good idea to ask them to drive and drive me home. My eyes may be very tired from the exercises and looking through new glasses experience I am going to have. 

I guess these are questions I will be able to ask when I get the glasses. 

Tunnel Vision

There was a tv show perhaps some time in the 1990s, that talked about a dad and his son who had some sort of degenerative eye disease. Meaning, their eyesight was being eaten away by something like maybe a bacteria. Whereas once upon a time, they could look and see everything, now their eyesight was becoming more and more narrow. 

It sounded like they were gradually starting to look through a more and more narrow tube, like a toilet paper tube. And all you can see is the circle out the other side of the tube. 

I remember being fascinated with this story, and also frightened. I love color so much. There is a question sometimes that people ask each other: “if you had to lose either your sight or your hearing, which would you rather lose?” I have never known what I would answer to this question. I love music with a passion. I have played violin for as long as I can remember. I have listened to all kinds of music my whole life. My mom used to take me to jazz bars when I was a kid. My dad would take me to go hear folk singers.

Some day, I will share stories here about my dad’s encounters with Bob Dylan and Ella Fitzgerald. My dad took me to the Smithsonian Folk Life festival. I sat in orchestras playing music for decades. I love music with a vibrant passion. When people ask me, “what kind of music do you like?” The only response I can give is: “everything except church organ music and bluegrass.” I love music. 

I also love color. I love using my eyes all day long to look at the sky, the trees, my sons’ faces, my sweet puppy girl. I love to paint, draw. I used to draw cartoons for my school newspapers. I have even illustrated a few books on “how to yoyo” with my dad who wrote them. My dad was Stuart Crump Jr., “Professor Yo-Yo.” You can find his books on Amazon.

I love matching colors and thinking about colors. 

My life feels completely rich with color and music surrounding me. 

I can’t imagine having to choose between “if you had to lose either your sight or hearing, which would you choose?” I don’t think I would be able to choose. 

I use my hearing (I memorize voices) to compensate for the fact that my eyesight is so poor. People call me on the phone and I know who they are from the moment they say, “hello.” I may not be able to picture their face, but I know their voice. 

One time, our family found an old cassette of our grandmother’s voice reading a paper she wrote. I knew instantly it was her voice. Her own daughter didn’t even know what the recording was. She said, “what’s that?” And I was perplexed. I finally realized she didn’t even know the sound of her own mom’s voice. To me, it was as clear as a bell coming through the cassette speakers. 

Would I choose to lose my sense of hearing or my sense of sight? I hope neither. And, I hope my eyesight will get better and better. I hope I don’t lose the extra amount of hearing I have long relied on. I love being able to hear things from far away. Birds, my sons when they were babies, music at a festival from far away, the band practicing at the local high school — drums reverberating around the neighborhood. 

Would you be able to choose - between having sight or sound taken away? What would you pick?