My life changed for 24 hours - Part 2

Last week, I wrote about wearing stronger Prism glasses. I wrote about how the glasses distort the room. I wrote about how my brain is starting to trust what my eyes see.

I want to quickly mention that my usual Vision Therapist, A, has had me hold a stick - maybe like a bamboo rain stick - and has changed the prism glasses on me and asked me, "does it feel straight or curved?" She has done this for weeks now.

Each time my brain, my eyes and my brain again FIGHT to figure out the answer. I know it's straight. Or do I? Have I ever seen this particular stick with my glasses off? Is it straight? I don't know!

I touch it and wonder. I always answer, "I don't know." I think one time I said, "I think it's curved." And she was so happy about that, but didn't elaborate. Like I said, I think they do things here to help me but don't always want to tell me exactly what they're doing - so the help will flow out organically and on its own timeline, rather than trying to force results by "cheating" and telling me what I'm supposed to think and feel about something.

Well, so after I completely walked across the room (as told in the previous blog post) twice, with the distortion glasses on, my vision therapist, C, put 3D glasses on me. Over my own pair of glasses. He put two traffic cones on the floor - one on either side of me. These are standard size, standard height, traffic cones.

[A photo of 2 orange and white striped traffic cones against a white background.]

In front of me, he put a white pole with a magnet holding up a 3D image of a donut shape.

[A slightly 3D photo of a wide circle that has wide blue stripes with narrow white stripes.]

The donut shape is actually printed on two translucent sheets of plastic. The two sheets of plastic can be widened and narrowed, to change how the 3D image of the donut appears. Is it behind the cards? Is it in front of the cards? Is it 3 feet from you? Is it 12 feet from you? It's a nifty piece of simple technology to be able to create this illusion.

My task was to look at this 3D donut (which takes me a few moments - I have to move my eyeballs until I can discern the 3D image, instead of 2 images, side by side... it takes me a few moments, but I can do it. it's possible that I can do this more quickly now than when I first started going to therapy! Very exciting!)

Well, then I was to keep looking at the donut and walk to my left, around the cone to my left, and circle it, then walk to the other cone (originally to my right), around it the other way. Essentially, my feet were making an infinity symbol around the traffic cones.

My task was to continue walking in this fashion, around the cones, as I continued to stare at the 3D donut vision.

I did this a bunch of times -- walking between and around the cones, staring at the donut, keeping it as a 3D image in view.

After a bit of time, my vision therapist said, "You're doing a LOT of work here." Funny, it didn't actually FEEL like a lot of work.

But he explained to me that the view of the 3D image kept changing in perspective to where I was. I had to hold it as a 3D image - which meant that my eyes were keeping focused on a moving target, and continuing to work together as the target moved, and keep it as a 3D image. Wow! He was right! My eyes WERE doing a lot of work!

He decided, "that's probably enough work for today." I swear these vision therapists are trained to see when their client / patient is tired and worn down from work. I don't usually feel worn down, but they are kind and tell me to take breaks. They can see I am tired.

He and I went and sat down at the table to close out my session.

I looked at him. He was writing notes and then he looked at me.

I realized - this man was sitting across a table from me, maybe 3 feet away from me. And - WOAH:

The WALL behind him was FAR BEHIND HIM!

This was a MIRACLE for me. I was seeing in 3D for the first time ever in my whole life. I could see the negative space as it looked like air, in between him and the wall behind him.

I know I am repeating myself here - but - It was a miracle!

I told him: "I can see you, so close to me, and that wall behind you is REALLY FAR behind you!"

The surprise on my face was probably very clear, and he knew that I was seeing in 3D for the first time. He felt so close to me, I felt like I had to scoot my chair back. My personal space felt invaded, though I have sat across that table from him and from other vision therapists before.

WOW. I scooted back my chair and he and I just continued to gently look at each other. I looked at the wall behind him, the window in the wall. I looked at the other vision therapist, D, behind vision therapist C. I mean, it was super crazy.

He told me to be gentle with myself as I walked out of the room. he told me to take my time before I walked to my car. He told me to be careful before I got in the car to drive home. "Take your time, just be careful."

I walked to the waiting room. The hallway was LONG. The ceiling was CLOSE. I finally got to the busier than usual waiting room. A lot was going on. Dr. Davis was meeting a new patient - a little girl. He is so funny. He asked her, "did you bring both of your eyeballs with you today?" And she giggled and hugged him.

Another vision therapist, M, was explaining something to the parent of a teen boy who I often see in vision therapy with me. I tried what she said and it was crazy cool. I will type THAT in another post ....

I sat there and stared at the ceiling, the walls, the people in the room. There was a military man in uniform there. I looked at his boots. Everything was new and in 3D for me. I was in complete shock. This was a complete shock to my system.

I couldn't take the (very nice) ruckus in the waiting room anymore, so I gently got up from my chair and went out the front door. There are trees outside and holy cow, they had limbs coming towards me! I could see the parking lot, the tree across the parking lot, and the building way off in the distance. It was all in 3D.

I walked so slowly to my car. Everything was different. My entire world had changed!

Driving home was interesting. I kept slowing down for things. I thought they were way closer to me than they actually were. It reminded me how I have been parking 3 feet farther away from where I intend to park. My eyes must have already been starting to make this leap to 3D vision, but it was subtle and I didn't see it clearly until after this exercise with the traffic cones.

There is so much I want to share and type, and yet, the blog posts are too long already.

I may have to do a part 3 to this blog post. My whole world changed for nearly 24 hours, and I have only shared about an hour of it with you.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please leave me some comments. I love comments and feedback.

I haven't yet figured out why the comments turn off after a few weeks on the blog. I want them to always work, but I haven't figured that out yet. I'll get there. To misquote Bob Dylan: "My world, it is a'changing."

My life changed for 24 hours - Part 1

I was at vision therapy, doing a lot of exercises with a substitute vision therapist, C.

He had me doing exercises that vision therapist, A, does with me weekly. She puts prism glasses on my eyes.

[A photo of 2 pairs of black-framed Prism Glasses sitting side by side on a white surface; the glasses are very thick on one side and have normal thickness on the other side.] 

[Photo from the website: https://www.optometrytimes.com/view/vision-therapy-top-10-must-have-list]

The spheres on the glasses rotate a full 360 degrees. And can be dialed in to a number on the top. I haven't studied what A does with it each time, But she has me put them on, walk around, do tasks, and then I take them off. She adjusts the dial / rotates the lenses to a different number, and has me do maybe the same task, maybe a different task.

Every time these glasses get put on me, the vision therapist says to me: "what changed?" Sometimes I say the room is tilting to the left. Sometimes, it tilts to the right. Sometimes the room looks like a giant smile, other times it looks like a giant frown. Sometimes it looks all squished - like a hall of mirrors at a carnival. The room changes drastically with prisms distorting the light. It's bizarre.

We do this probably for 15-20 minutes of each of my vision therapy visits.

Some of the prism glasses aren't as thick. I think those are sort of a beginner set of glasses. I think the point of those was to make sure I wouldn't get nauseous with the glasses changing what I see, so they were a weaker version.

Recently, she has put a very thick pair on me, and dialed them around to different settings. She is gradually getting me used to seeing things differently, and keeping me from getting nauseous while doing it! She is magic!!

Well, I had a substitute vision therapist at a recent appointment. And he put on the fat prism glasses on my face. He rotated them so that the room was completely squished on the right side! It was crazy!

I was walking with a wide berth to the right of me. I think the right of me was about 10 feet of room. But it looked like it was maybe 6 inches. I didn't want to run in to anything as I walked across the room (that was my task), so I went as far left as I felt I could go and not bother other patients and therapists in the room, and still not stub my toe on things or bump into the table or the file cabinet, and such. It was quite wonky.

I got to the other side of the room. I looked at a plant and the window at the edge of the room. I know the middle of the window is a straight metal piece. But the glasses made it look like a curved letter "C." My vision therapist had me trace the metal shape with my hand. "Does it feel curved?" I decided that it did feel curved. He said, "great! That means your brain is starting to trust what your eyes see!" It's bizarre when you know something is straight: up and down. Perpendicular to the floor. But it looks like a left-handed letter "C." and when you touch it, and follow the lines, you think your hand is curving like the letter "C" to follow the curve you're looking at. The whole thing feels psychedelic.

He took off the glasses and rotated them the other way. Now, the same side of the room was still just as squished, but I was approaching it from the other angle. So weird. Now it was the side of the room to the left of me. But previously, I had walked with that side of the room to the right of me. It was still squished and I gave it a wide berth.

After doing these things, he had me doing an exercise. I have decided this blog post is just about long enough, so I will share that exercise in the next blog post. Please look for it, because my brain and my eyes did something so remarkable, that I want to share it in its own post.

I can't wait for you to read next week's blog post! What happened for me was very exciting.

Peripheral Vision

So, if you take your hands and pretend to use them as a pair of binoculars, you greatly limit your peripheral vision. It's as if you're looking through a cardboard tube, or you've got a pair of 360 degree horse blinders on.

Public domain image from https://thumbs.dreamstime.com

That's how I see. It's also called "Tunneling." Interestingly enough, my older son told me recently that "Tunneling" is also now a video game terminology. Who knew?

I have walked around my entire life, seeing only what I could see through my glasses. I couldn't see anything around them. To see somewhere else, I have had to always turn my head and look directly at whatever it is. Like a bird does, come to think of it. Have you seen how birds constantly tilt their head to look at something specific? It's entertaining. It's probably not as entertaining when I do it.

Well, one thing my vision therapist has had me do, is try to widen my peripheral view. In an early blog post, I shared a game that was very colorful, with blocks. I had to stack the blocks in a certain way.

Another day, my vision therapist had me walk on a sidewalk next to street signs like " no parking" signs. I was to look straight ahead, but be aware of coming up to, passing, and moving beyond the street signs to my side. That was interesting!

Well, I have mentioned also in this blog that I walk dogs. In my area of the planet, it's been winter. Not a completely freezing and snowy winter, but definitely cold enough to wear a sweatshirt and keep the hood up.

In the past, for the rest of my life in fact, I have worn sweatshirts with the hood up to keep my head and ears warm. I never thought about it.

Last week, I kept having to shove the sweatshirt hood back off my forehead, because it was blocking my peripheral vision!!! This is MAJOR!

I am becoming more aware of things in my periphery! It's a wonder that I never saw these things before. And now, when my vision is blocked, I miss it.

As I am sitting here typing this blog post, I see the sliding doors to my left and outside, my deck. I am staring at the MacBook screen and typing, but I see to my right, the living room and chairs and couch and TV. Wow. My peripheral vision has definitely opened up these last few months, thanks to vision therapy. WOW.

I am so grateful to have the team I do, helping me with my vision. It's amazing how much more my world is opening up thanks to several months of therapy. I still have several more months to go.

It's so nice being able to see more than only what I see through my eyeglasses!

Public domain photo. A pair of backlit glasses frame a sunset. 

Reach for the Stars

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. Ok, well, my brain actually never shuts off.

One thing I have been thinking about (am constantly thinking about) is how much I miss my dad. I think about him every day. I think about him often. And I would just like to indulge my own emotions here and share some tidbits about my dad.

[A photo of my dad and me. He is wearing a yoyo t-shirt. Photo from October, 2014]

My dad was Stuart Crump Jr., also known as: "Professor Yo-Yo." He lived in the Washington, DC area his whole life. He would say "I'm the only Yoyo in Washington who knows what he's doing."

My dad entertained audiences at The White House for the Easter Egg Roll. Many years he did that. My dad entertained at The White House for the 4th of July event on the White House Lawn; an event for staffers. One year, after the war in Iraq known first as Desert Shield, then changed to Desert Storm, the soldiers came home in a big parade. My dad and I marched in a parade, doing yoyo tricks, to welcome home the soldiers from Iraq.

My dad entertained at countless schools, birthday parties, Bar Mitzvah's... he taught yoyo classes annually at the International Juggler's Festival in Las Vegas. He competed in countless yoyo contests, winning many in his age group over the years and over the various age groups.

My dad's entire goal in life was to bring happiness and joy to people around him. My dad inspired hope for a happy future. My dad, I feel, embodied kindness and hope to the nth degree. I believe that everyone he met, considered him to be a friend of theirs. I believe my dad felt absolutely the same way about them.

My dad was a single dad of me until I was 8. Then he married my step-mom. They had 3 boys together who are all a lot younger than I am. I feel like they are my full-blooded brothers. I love them all. My dad was so proud of all of them.

My dad was a Boy Scout. My dad never made Eagle. My dad said, "if I ever have a son, I want him to be an Eagle Scout." Guess what. All 3 of his sons became Eagle Scouts. All 3 of them can also wield a yoyo with panache.

My dad left a legacy behind him of yoyos. He was awarded the first trophy for a Lifetime Achievement Award from the yoyo community. It is housed in the American Yo-Yo Association museum in Chico, California. My brother who lives out there visited it a few weeks ago and sent me the photo of the trophy with our dad's name on it. I am so grateful that my dad's legacy lives on in various ways.

In addition to being a delightful entertainer, my dad was a prolific writer.

He wrote for his school yearbook in high school. One of the years, they made their yearbook into a record / an LP. A vinyl record. To be played on a turntable / a record player.

My dad took countless sports photographs. Every day since 7th grade he carried a camera with him. He always hoped to see a UFO some day. He wanted to be sure to have his camera with him when he saw it. The only day he didn't carry his camera was the day he married my step-mom.

Many of my dad's sports photographs won awards. Many were in the school yearbooks for high school and his college - Brown University. Many were in local papers.

One photo my dad took was of a Brown University student who did a prank. President Johnson was riding in a motorcade, visiting Providence, Rhode Island. My dad went and saw the parade, and snapped a photo of the President in the motorcade.

After he developed the photo, he realized that one of the guys on the car was a Brown University student. The kid was dressed in a suit and tie, same as the bodyguards. At some point in the parade, the kid just ran out from the crowd and hopped on the car like he belonged there. Yikes! My dad got a photo of that. I believe it ran in the local paper of the day. Quite the scandal of the day!

Another photo my dad took was of a student doing the long jump at a track meet, and as his arms went up and over his head, the framed a United States Flag over head quite nicely. My dad planned the shot and sat there. He waited all day to capture that photo.

My dad called that photo, "Reach for the Stars." It was one of his favorite photos he ever took. It's really neat looking. That photo is in my book, "Mere Creativity." You can purchase it on Amazon.com:

So, with my dad's yoyo shows, one of the things he always said at the end of every yoyo show was, he would do a "Shoot the Moon" yoyo trick. It's a dangerous trick that brings the yoyo very close to your face. My dad had a scar between his eyes from a red Duncan Butterfly yoyo that he used when he was learning the trick. He would do the trick, "Shoot the Moon," and say, "Reach for the Moon, because if you miss, you'll wind up among the stars."

My dad wrote so many books on yo-yoing. He also wrote books on other topics too, but I will share those in a future post or 5. Probably more than 5. Knowing me. I have a lot to share about my dad, and folks like learning about him.

You can find many of my dad's books on Amazon.com too:

I have been wondering recently what vision issues my dad had. I know he had near-sightedness. I know when I was a girl, that he would close his eyes and say, "I'm resting my eyes."

I know his prescription was much stronger than mine is. I know he had cataract surgery when he got older. I wonder if he also had spatial issues like I do, or other vision issues. I know he respected that I had vision issues. I will write about that in the next blog post.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a little about my dad. I have more to share, but this blog post is way long at this point, so it's time to close.

As any good stage person would say: "Always leave them wanting more!"

And, as my dad would say: "Just say 'YO!'"

Parking Spot

Approximately 20 years ago, I asked a friend to figure out which of the cars in the parking lot was my newsd car. (New for me but a used car = Newsd. I know, so clever.) He pointed straight away at my car and said, "well, it couldn't be that one." But then he had no other ideas for which one it might be. 

Standing there, staring at all the cars, I finally asked him, "what made you point at that one and say, 'it couldn't be that one.'?" He said, "because it has an out-of-state license plate." I also wondered why he would have even thought to LOOK at that one - and somehow, in the conversation, he pointed out that it was the only car that was parked crooked. 

I finally told him: "that is my new car." Yes, it had out of state license plates, but they were soon fixed. I got it registered and such. This friend, in the conversation, pointed out to me for the first time (I had never known this about myself!) that I parked crooked. 

I had no idea I consistently parked crooked. I was completely clueless. I also was never able to correct it. 

So, a few months ago I arrived at vision therapy and had a chuckle. Of the 20 or so cars in the lot, almost all of them were parked crooked. I felt like "this is my community." I had a good chuckle about that at the time. 

Well, about a week or two ago, I noticed that I was now parking badly, but in a whole new way. I don't think I still park crooked. I haven't checked that out specifically. But I noticed that suddenly, I keep parking about 3 feet back of where I normally have always parked. 

It's like if the parking space has the white lines in the front with a cement block you're not supposed to hit with the underside of your bumper .... over the years, I have usually gotten almost to that bumper or else have hit it, and then backed up a little, listening to my bumper drag back off of it. It makes me cringe, but it's the best I have been able to do. *oops* 

Well, last week or maybe it was the week before, I have discovered that I am now parking 3 feet away from this sort of phenomenon. I think I have pulled all the way up to it and done just fine. But - it turns out - I am still 3 feet short of the top (?) of the parking space! Consistently! I park my car every day in my garage. It's a very deep garage. It could easily accommodate 2 cars parked back bumper to front bumper. (Not a 2 car garage with 2 doors in front; but 2 cars could fit in the one door. It's a deep garage, not a wide garage.) 

My dad's stuff is mostly in the back half of the garage. I need to go through it and pick and choose what I want to keep and what needs to go. I haven't gotten around to it, but I will. But I have consistently been able to park in the garage, and pull up to the spot just before my dad's stuff. This leaves me about 4 feet of clearance behind my car, before the garage door. I don't need all that distance, but that's what I have been doing. 

Well, suddenly, I now park nearly with my back bumper at the garage door. I don't know what happened. But my vision / distance / judgement is all askew from how it's been. It turns out, I have been learning, that I am starting to perceive depth. 

Things are starting to look different to me. it's been very gradual for me. But I no longer am able to use the visual queues around me the way I used to. And it's consistent enough now, that I am parking 3 feet shallow of where I actually intend to park. I have been paying attention to this, this week, and it is still consistent. 

I think I may need to go to an empty parking lot and start parking and parking and parking. Drive and park. Drive and park. Over and over, and re-learn how to park. 

One last thing - just because. My grandparents had a tennis ball hanging from their garage ceiling, on a string. They had a very long station wagon "back in the day," and they wanted to park it "just so" in their garage. It was hard to get the car in just the right spot. So, one time, they pulled it in, determined it was just how they wanted it. And then the climbed up into the attic or the rafters or whatever (I know there was an attic up there) and they hung down a tennis ball. Now, every time they parked that car, they would drive up to the tennis ball. The ball would very gently tap their windshield, and they would know that they were perfectly parked. 

I have been thinking about such a tennis ball these last 2 or 3 weeks. Every time I get out of my car and see that I am still parking shallow. I won't be taking the time and effort it requires to figure out how to get up to the rafters of my garage to hang a tennis ball. But - it jumps in my head now and then to think about this. Just something else amusing going on in my head."

 

My Vision Therapist

I got permission from my vision therapy team to give a real shout out to them. So, I am going to use this post to just give a shout out to my Optometrist, Dr. Tod Davis, who is a leader in the industry of vision therapy, and to his whole team of people - from the office folks to the vision therapists who work for him and help me see better.

Dr. Tod Davis from Virginia Vision Therapy

They have multiple locations and multiple vision therapists. I haven't met the entire team of people who work for him. But the ones I have met are all fantastic. I have learned something from probably every single person I have met at his team.

Dr. Davis has a fun sense of humor. He also loves the talents that people have. I think he genuinely gets enjoyment from knowing people and seeing all the cool things they do. Also, he loves to share joy with everyone who comes in to his space. He's a great guy and I feel privileged to be getting help from this team.

When Dr. Davis was testing me to see what specific kinds of things should be put into my glasses to help me see better, he tested my ability to see 3D.

He told me to look at his face and concentrate on his nose. He put a pair of Prism testers over my eyes and asked me what changed. I said, "your nose came forward!" He looked genuinely amused.

He took the prisms away from me and told me to do the same thing - look at his face, but this time, concentrate on his ears. He put up the prisms for me, and his whole everything changed. He asked me, "what changed about my ears?" I said, "they went around to the back of your head!"

I think this kind of thing is a wonderfully entertaining thing for Dr. Davis to experience with patient after patient. They have never seen in 3D, and he gets to introduce the experience to them. WOW. From my perspective, it's clear that he enjoys his work. He enjoys helping people see better.

I believe he also cares about the people and wants them to be able to live a more fuller life, with eyes that work the way they are supposed to. If you need vision therapy, I encourage you to contact Dr. Tod Davis. If you don't live near him (in the Washington, DC / Northern Virginia area), then I encourage you to contact him and see if he can refer you to a vision therapist in your area.

https://virginiavisiontherapycenter.com

Happy Birthday, Grandpa

My grandfather just turned 99. He is local to me. We had a big family gathering to see him. He is Stuart Crump, Sr. (My dad was Stuart Crump Jr. Please note: my dad never used that comma before "Jr." He just didn't like it. My dad was a rebel.)

[Grandpa and my puppy, Lady Bella Luna.]

My extended family was there - aunts and uncles, cousins, distant relatives I rarely see.

I just want to share something I learned from one of my aunts.

Backing up, though:

When I was maybe ages 4-6, I went to the eye doctor. The eye doctor put heavy black plastic-framed eyeglasses on me and showed me a 3D image of a butterfly. I remember waving my hand over the image, trying to get it underneath the butterfly.

He also showed me numbers to test to see if I am color blind. I was never color blind, although, come to think of it, I should probably write a post about the time I was scared that I was possibly going colorblind. Haha, another blog post for another day.

One thing the eye doctor told me was that while my eyes were fine, I had a lazy eye. He had me wear plain glass glasses with tape on the side. I have shown a photo of this on another, earlier blog post. He also had me walking around, wearing an eye patch. That's super embarrassing when you're a little kid, by the way.

Another thing he had me doing at home was that my dad was supposed to hold up his fingers and have me follow his fingers together: left .......... right .......... up .......... down .......... left .......... right ...........

Well, as I have been doing some thinking about all of this, as I have been doing vision therapy for a few months now with Dr. Davis' team. And I got to wondering if what I did as a kid was vision therapy. I didn't think I had anyone to ask. My dad is gone. I haven't spoken to my bio mom now in 5 years (it's mutual, and it's a long, sad story). I didn't know if my grandpa would know.

In other words, I have felt sad that I didn't know if I could ask anyone in my present about whether or not I did vision therapy as a little girl.

So, back to my grandpa's 99th birthday party. I was sitting there, next to my grandpa who was holding my puppy girl, Bella. He loves Bella so much.

I forget why I brought it up, but someone must have asked me, "what are you up to these days?" and I answered, "I am going to vision therapy."

My aunt was sitting next to me. I remember when she and my uncle were high school students, dating in probably the late 70s and early 80s. She has been in my life a LONG TIME, in other words.

My aunt spontaneously piped up and said, "well, you did vision therapy when you were 6 years old." I turned and looked at her and felt so incredibly grateful that she knew this! I said, "it WAS? I was wondering that!"

And she said, "Well, sure. You wore a patch on your eye. I remember you had a lazy eye. And your dad did exercises, I think, with you at home."

Wow - she knew and remembered things that I also remembered. I had no idea anyone knew these things!! I told her I didn't know that was vision therapy; my dad had only said, "eye doctor." I knew I had an eye doctor. I didn't know he was a vision therapist.

I am just so happy that when I was a little girl, my dad took me to vision therapy, to try to get my eyes corrected.

It turns out that with the knowledge that exists now, they would never patch someone's eye. They used to patch the strong eye so that the weak eye (the lazy eye) would have to do more work. It would force that eye to be more strong. All it did, though, was encourage my eyes NOT to work together. Fast forward 40 years, and my eyes don't work together. Which is what we are correcting now.

My vision therapist was so excited to hear from me at my last session that I had vision therapy as a kid. I was excited to tell them. It's cool to see how far vision therapy has come in the last 40 years!

We still do that left .......... right .......... up .......... down ........... They do still patch my eye, but only for short periods of time and only for very specific reasons. After patching one, they will patch the other.

So, to finish this up - happy birthday to my grandpa. And thank you to my Aunt C for knowing that I had vision therapy as a little girl and for telling me so matter-of-factly about it. I like getting answers to questions that I don't even know who to ask about.