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. 

3 Dimensions

So, I have mentioned here before that I see in 2 dimensions. My eyes have never worked together, for as long as I can remember. I flicker between them very rapidly. As a result, I take in at least twice the information that everyone else takes in, and my brain has to make sense of it all.

When I am tired, I close one eye. When I am out in the sunlight, I close one eye. That probably has to do with my sensitivity to light, also (which my vision therapist is ALSO working on).

Well, so I remember years ago, probably in 1984, seeing Vincent Van Gogh's paintings of his room and the cafe, and I thought to myself: "of COURSE he painted them that way, that's how he saw them." Because that's how I see things.

Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago's website: https://www.artic.edu

"Café Terrace at Night," 1888 Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

It turns out other people look at me in constant perplexity and cannot understand what I mean when I say that I see things in 2 dimensions.

You know how when you go to the movies, and you see a nice movie. Let's say: Star Wars. It has ships and motion and people talking. And it's all on a flat screen. That's how I see things.

[Image of Darth Vader talking with Princess Leah is from Pinterest. It's the only one that I could find to share.]

Then you can go to the exact same movie, and wear those 3D glasses, and suddenly, those ships are flying toward you. Maybe Darth Vader and Princess Lea are talking and they are closer to you than the background is. This is how I feel like the rest of the world must see things.

I don't see in 3D unless I am wearing special glasses, like the ones given in the movie theater. Those glasses have a certain way of bending light and such, to force a fake 3D image. They force your eyes to take in images as a 3D image, even though it's actually flat.

Anyway, so several weeks ago, I was sitting on my toilet (yes, I do that sometimes, don't make a big deal out of it), and I looked at the orange towel that one of my boys had haphazardly hung up on the rack. I stared at it. I realized it looked 3D to me. I could see the part that was folded and sticking out toward me - as if it was 3D.

I've NEVER seen 3D before that with my own eyes. I just wanted to sit there and stare at the stupid towel. Sloppily hung.

That week, I went in and told my vision therapist, A, about the towel. She was thrilled for me! She loves hearing my progress. She is working so hard with various kinds of prism glasses (I have previously typed this as prizm with a "z" and I don't have the energy to go back and fix my posts, but I have been corrected that this technology is spelled with an "s," and not a "z.")

I have caught one other glimpse of 3D in the "real" world somewhere else, since that towel. But I don't see it all the time, every day.

An interesting note .... as I typed this blog post, I have had my left eye shut. I just can't take in all that extra information. Reading and typing (typing while trying to loosely proofread my own stuff), I do this with 1 eye shut.

I look forward to having both of my eyes work together. I feel like life will be so much more easy and efficient for me, instead of so exhausting and trying every day, every moment, as soon as my eyes work the way they are supposed to.

More Tape on My Glasses

"

I am sitting here, watching Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston, as I type up a few posts to be published in the next few weeks.

I wanted to share that since I got this new concussion, I need to get the eye doctor - Dr. Magic - to re-evaluate me for Vision Therapy. My vision therapist put more tape on my glasses since I told her that my double vision has gotten worse since the concussion. So - here is a new photo of my glasses with the more tape on them. Thank you to my vision therapist, A, for doing this for me. Every little thing helps.

More tape on my glasses. Rose Tyler from Doctor Who on the TV in the background.

I also want to mention that I went in to vision therapy a week after the concussion, crying. Crying and crying due to things going on in my personal life. My head was in a complete jumble. I know I wasn't talking about things in any order. It was all completely like telling pieces of the puzzle that were scattered around a room:

"This piece of the puzzle is this...." walk to the other side of the room, find one in a corner: "this piece of the puzzle is this...." walk over to the couch, find another piece of the puzzle under a couch cushion "this piece of the puzzle looks like this...." go to the dog food bowl and pull out a half-eaten puzzle piece, "this part of the puzzle looks like this...."

I wasn't making any sense. I was crying and crying about my life. She put a weighted blanket on me. It is like getting a big hug. It turns up my body's sense of gravity. Somehow, it helps with my diagnosed Disassociation. It makes me tune in to my body as a real entity.

My vision therapist listened to me as I told all of these disparate things that I am positive didn't make any sense.

Then, she put funky glasses on me and used a pen light to shine light on my eyes through these very dark glasses. I will share more about this in the next post.

I left vision therapy after this session, feeling much more grounded and calm than when I had gone in - crying and frantic. I feel safe at vision therapy. I am grateful to have this one very safe space in my life.

I haven't ever shared yet where my vision therapy team is. I would like to give a call out to them. They are caring and wonderful and helping me learn to see and to walk. And I want to recommend them to everyone.

You can find the vision therapy team here - Dr. Tod Davis. Dr. Davis is the one in this blog to whom I refer to as: Dr. Magic.

Putting the extra tape on my glasses has made my vision calm down a bit. I am grateful they know these simple tips and tricks to help me see better - a little bit every visit.

Mentioned in this post:

Doctor Who.

Weighted Blanket

"

Medical Costs

"Every time I turn around, someone on my medical team is telling me I need to purchase something else. Last week, it was my concussion doctor telling me to purchase one of these:  

 They said it will relieve the tension in my neck, get blood flowing, and relive the pain in my head / forehead / migraine pain. 

He let me use his in his office last week while he went and did, I don't know, paperwork or something.  I think it did help. The left side of my forehead was hurting before I used it, and the right side was really hurting. 

After I used it, the left side didn't hurt much at all, and the right side hurt still, but maybe not quite so much. He showed me how to really get up under my skull and massage there. It was cool in that I could control how hard to push. 

When I have had others try to rub my neck, they may not have pushed nearly as hard as I would like them to. I can't remember anyone pushing too hard for me. I am pretty tough, and my muscles are constantly tense (thanks to my Complex PTSD; the constancy of being in "fight, flight, fawn or freeze" mode 100% of the time) ... so I like a strong push down on my muscles to try to get them to loosen up. 

There was a time, more than a decade ago, maybe 20 years ago now, when I went to a massage therapist about a struggle I was having in my shoulder. I eventually had a surgery on that shoulder. But before I went that route, I tried a massage therapist to help loosen a tight spot in there. The therapist commented that they had never known anyone to have such tense muscles before. They had to really push in order to get anything to work for me.  

So, with this contraption in the doctor's office, I was able to push so hard it almost ripped my skin. Which both felt good, but also felt terrible.  So, I ordered it today, just now. It should arrive on my "free shipping day," which is just a few days from now. I am going to see if some coconut oil will help it not rip my skin, but still help me push so hard.

 

---

Wow, I can tell I am seriously distracted as I type this. 

I talked with both of my kids early on in typing this. Coffee, school, computers, math, elephants. 

What can we talk and not talk about in the course of 20 minutes while I type up a blog post? 

So, the vision therapy place often gives me things. Next week they may give me a ball and a string. Gosh, I seriously need to get THAT blog post typed up. I found out that my eyes aren't lined up. And that's yet ANOTHER blog post I need to type up. There are so many weird things with my eyes. I wish my eyes just worked the way they should. 

A few weeks ago, they gave me blue sunglasses. For relaxing. It's like looking out at a cloudy day, looking through these blue sunglasses. Very relaxing.  

Early on, they had me buy a walking rail. I sanded and painted it. My memory is that it is 2 inches x 4 inches by 8 feet. I took photos of me sanding and painting it. I was going to do a whole blog post about this walking rail, too. Who knows where those photos went by now.  

So, one last thing - I have so many posts I want to type up, but also have constant THINGS going on in my life, distracting me. And my vision problems are one of the ways that manifest in me as ADHD, although the Complex PTSD also manifests as ADHD.  

Today, it seems, my thoughts are completely unclear and distracting. I was trying to share that medical care is expensive, even with good insurance. Because they are constantly saying, "buy this, buy this, buy this." It costs a lot of privilege with money to be able to "buy this, buy this, buy this."  

Without further distraction & also while writing something that isn't the best sentence that I have ever written -- I wish health care covered all these EXTRA things that doctors and my medical care team are constantly telling me I need need need. :::sigh::: 

I hope, at some point here, also to get to a place where I am not as distracted and constantly trying to just keep up with my own thoughts.  

 --------------------------- Sorry I didn't post last week; I had too many thoughts in my head & too few moments to actually SIT and clearly THINK and WRITE any posts. I need a writing desk and a writing time. 

Do you have a writing practice? When and where do you write? I was looking at writing desks for me .... and, there I go again, with my distracting thoughts. Ok, not the best blog post ever. But maybe this shows you a sample of what I contend with all day, every day. 

Today is definitely a day when I can't seem to focus.  :::: sigh :::::  / again.  

I hope you have a good day / week / month / year. "

Walking Rail

[A photo of me walking a rail at Vision Therapy. The rail is a long plank of wood that has been painted a very light blue. I am a blonde gal wearing funky prisms glasses with a bright orange band around my head, and I am also wearing a dress with blue roses, and fuzzy socks. Behind me is a platform for people to sit on and swing as another aspect of vision therapy.]

Me, in my favorite dress, using the walk rail at Vision Therapy

One of the first things we did with vision therapy was teach me how to use a walk rail. I had no idea I had challenges walking. I mean, I do know that when I was a kid, every day I walked in to walls and furniture.

I remember being a teenager, and waking up and walking right in to my dresser, then walking into the wall that jutted out in front of my room in the hallway. (It was the wall on the outside of my brother's closet, in the room next to mine; but for me to walk down the hallway, I needed to walk around this corner.) I walked into that wall every single day.

So, one morning, I happened to pay attention to my body. (It wasn't something I did very often; see posts on dissasociation - I will probably post on it many times over the course of this blog.)

I woke up, and got out of bed to walk to the bathroom. I walked straight into my dresser, maneuvered myself around it, and walked straight into the wall outside my room instead of walking around either obstruction.

I decided I was done walking into these things. I couldn't probably help myself completely and stop walking into everything, but I could at least stop myself from walking into my dresser and this wall.

I knew blind people would count their steps and have their entire house memorized so they wouldn't have to walk into their furniture. Surely I could figure out a way to stop walking into things in my own home. I decided right then and there to approach them more slowly and take my time and walk around them.

I never walked into that dresser or that wall again. Don't get me wrong, I still walk into things. A lot. I have bruises up and down my legs. I don't even notice that I walk into things. I will see a bruise sometimes and wonder what I walked into. I often walk into the dishwasher door and the coffee table. And who knows what else.

I would figure when the vision therapist told me I had trouble walking, that THIS was what they were referring to.

The way this vision therapist seems to work is they start me on activities, but won't necessarily say what it is or why we are doing something. I know it would help me, personally, if I knew why we were doing something. But I guess their methodology is that they want me to improve organically. Improve by doing things, rather than telling me what they are trying to improve.

It reminds me of the early scene in the movie, "The Karate Kid," where the student is learning "Wax on, wax off." He doesn't know he is learning Karate right then - he just thinks he is waxing a car. Maybe my vision therapist is like my Vision Master - she is showing my body how to do things. And then, it will naturally improve in doing things when I am going about my business during days, outside of the vision therapy room.

I will be talking about the vision rail many times in these blog posts. Recently, when I was walking it, my vision therapist told me how she saw improvement, and THEN, I understood why she hadn't told me what she was going for. I will share all of that, too.

My vision rail looks like a floor level balance beam. And: I don't walk ON it. I walk next to it in certain, specific ways.