I have been doing light therapy as part of my vision therapy. We started at once a week at the vision therapy practice, I think 3 minutes per round.
So, you may have heard of light therapy for folks who have Seasonal Affect Disorder. Some folks get sad or depressed during the winter months because there is less sunlight. My friend Katie of the Fellowship of Former Christian Scientists uses this lamp:
Some folks use lamps like that one, to combat the long winter months and feel more happy because they have more light in their life during the winter.
Light therapy, it turns out, can do more than just help a person feel more happy during the winter months!
It turns out that light therapy can treat skin issues too, and a variety of other things. I had light therapy on my exzema and some other things on my skin that I can't remember now specifically what they were. It basically bleached some red patches on my skin and worked in conjunction with a topical cream solution I use twice a day.
Light therapy, according to WebMd, can also treat migraines, acne, neck pain, dementia, strokes... all kinds of things! Wow!
My vision therapy team has loaned me a lamp with a lightbulb in it. When I first did this, I used a bright pen light to shine light through specific glasses I wear. Then, they told me to use a non-LED bulb at 25 watts at home. I set one up.
And now they have loaned me the correct lamp. It's a nice portable little lamp. I am supposed to work my way slowly up to 20 minutes per session, per pair of glasses.
The first pair of glasses is a deep indigo color. I love looking at the bulb through the relaxing indigo color. It's quite beautiful. The glasses say on them: "Upsilon-Omega." Then, I rest my eyes by palming them. Then I put on the second pair of glasses, they are a deep forest green color, and stare at the lightbulb. The green glasses say on them: "Mu-Upsilon." I am not as much a fan of the green glasses.
I have to do these specific glasses. I think the case where they store the glasses at the vision therapist office has 20-30 pairs of different types of glasses. So this two pairs are my specific "prescription." I am not entirely sure what they are doing.
The green may be making me less sensitive to bright light outside and thus have fewer migraines. I am not sure. The blue may be helping me see better out of my right eye, especially. I don't think I have written the blog post yet about how I cannot see in the dark at all. I really can't, and especially can't see out of my right eye in the dark.
I figured this out when my son was trying to show me something and it was evening. He had to hold my hand and guide me around bushes, trees and a neighbor's house to go see something. Oh wait, he actually wanted me to Smell something; not see it. I think someone had been vaping and he thought it smelled good but he didn't know what it was. When he got me back to that place, the scent was gone. I am guessing it was a vape pen that smelled like vanilla or something.
But that was the night I realized I seriously can't see in the dark as well as probably normal people can.
It's funny, because I keep the lights dim in the house all the time. I walk around in the dark or have minimal nightlights in the outlets that are movement-sensitive, so they turn on just so I can see where I'm going at night.
I think this blog post has wandered all over the place. I think I will need to do another blog post about this topic. Maybe on a day when my ADHD brain is a bit more organized!!
This Covid-19 quarantine is doing quite the number on my thinking / my thoughts. Everything is in a jumble.
I type this blog post at the end of April; I think I have been self-quarantining for almost 2 months now. I wish I had written down the date that I started. It's been a while.
I wonder if by the time this is read, if I will still be in quarantine. Probably. The date for Virginia to stop the quarantine, as far as I know, is June 10. At least it was the last time I checked.
Best wishes to all. Please leave me a comment so I know you're reading.
I went to Vision Therapy twice after I had already started self-isolating at home. At first, the Optometrist's office was able to stay open. But then practices like his, which aren't deemed (vital?) had to shut down.
I talked with them on the phone two weeks in a row after that, to discuss my treatment while I'm at home.
And now I am trying to do my treatment while I am at home. My treatment consists of so many kinds of things, and I wish I had photos or whatever of all the different things. I wish I spent more time doing these things. Alas, there is just so much going on in my life and I don't do the self-care things the way I am supposed to.
I wasn't brought up with the term "self-care," so I am just now learning what it is, and what it means. This is what self-care means to me - after years of paying attention and trying to understand it:
take your medicines at the proper times
sleep a healthy amount of sleep for you
take a nap if you need to (I can't fully sleep at night so often need to nap. I can't help it; it's part of my Complex PTSD to not be able to sleep well at night.)
eat good food, not only junk
exercise or do something active during your days (this is the skill I am the worst at)
And now, with vision therapy, I have new Self-Care items to add to the list.
Here is one of them: it's called the Moro Reflex.
This woman explains what the Moro Reflex is so well, and shows an advanced exercise.
The first movement he does is similar to what I am doing. This is another Moro Reflex exercise:
Several months ago, early in my vision therapy, my therapist actually had me doing these: Carpet Angels. (Like snow angels, but on the carpet.) So this is a more basic exercise, a baby step up to more complex Moro Splat reflexes.
Here is another video with different information about the Carpet Angels:
So, this is one thing I am supposed to be doing every day, 20 times per day in my self-isolation version of Vision Therapy.
I need to be better about doing these things. There is just so much going on in my life that everything else always seems like the priority.
Also, after doing meals and dishes, I have to give my heart a rest because it races so often and just needs to calm down for a while before I start the next thing. This happens to me constantly. I wouldn't wish a heart problem on anyone.
I finally understand that saying: "Youth is wasted on the young." I used to love things like rock climbing, canoeing, hiking, camping, water skiing, snow skiing, ice skating. And now my heart gets all excited at loading the dish washer. Yep, my life is just THAT exciting. My body isn't what it once was, thanks to heart issues.
Anyway, I hope this blog post helps many people out there. It works well for folks who are on the Autism Spectrum as well as folks who have been traumatized as children or as adults and have a big startle reflex. One of the videos says that it helps folks like me who have bad short-term memory. I can't often interpret what I am looking at, since I see it in ways that other folks don't have to worry about seeing it. I see it from my left eye, my right eye, and then both together but the object is transposed on top of itself in an odd way. My brain then has to interpret what those 3 different things I just saw were. It's complex, and it means I can't retain a lot of things long term in my head.
So, this Moro Splat exercise is supposed to help me with having better short term memory, too.
In a previous blog post, I mentioned that someone pointed out to me 20 years ago that I park crooked. I have always parked crooked. I can't do any better.
A few months ago, some random man in a parking lot actually started hassling me after accusing me of parking too close to the line. I told him, "I have vision issues and I can't do better." Which of course was an invitation to him to tell me his life story and all of his woes. That will teach me to sit in my car and check social media for a few minutes after having pizza with a friend!
In the words of Mark Twain: "But I digress."
[A sepia toned photo of Mark Twain sitting on a chair in clearing.]
Well, a few weeks ago, maybe 3 months now? I am seriously beginning to lose track of time.... I noticed that I have started consistently parking about 3-4 feet from the end of the parking space. You know how you pull in, and there is a white painted line and your car can go forward until you reach it, then you nicely stop before you go over that white line?
I started parking about 3 or 4 feet away from it. Before reaching it. Consistently. For weeks! I couldn't, for the life of me, get up to the line. I knew I was doing this, and I would inch forward, inch forward, inch forward. And then park. Get out of the car, and I was still several feet away from that darn line.
I used to park so crooked. I am probably still doing that. And: in addition to that, I am now parking towards the outer edge of a parking spot and not all the way IN the parking spot.
I am definitely starting to perceive space differently. It is weird to know these things intellectually but not know how to fix them quickly or easily.
I guess I will just keep doing the exercises and practicing with the tools I have and over time, maybe I will see the way a healthy-eyed person sees. Or at least MORE like the way a healthy-eyed person sees!
I can only hope.
I will leave you with this funny thing -- my younger son suddenly has a thing for Boston accents. I had us watch "Good Will Hunting." It was fun to watch my boys try to figure out where they had seen the main character (Will Hunting) in other movies. I finally had to tell them: "He is the main character in "The Martian." I am, of course, talking about Matt Damon.
In Boston, they don't say, "Park the Car," the way the majority of Americans do. So, in the words of a true Bostonian, I will leave you these words: "Pahk the Cah in Hahvahd Yahd."
My boys were surprised to see this line in the movie. They didn't know where the reference came from, but they have heard the line, "How do you like them apples?" planty of times before.
The stars are up there in 3 dimensions (or more?) But don't we see them, with our naked eyes, in 2 dimensions?
I wonder if most people see the space and distance between stars? Maybe if they use binoculars? I wonder if we all see the stars the same way?
Except some people might be like Vincent Van Gogh, and see streaks and floaters and other beautiful things, so the stars take on the appearance of singing, visually. (I beg that you will indulge me with my creative words on this matter; after all, we are talking about Vincent Van Gogh's vision.)
I love the constellations. I wonder if they will become more beautiful to me than ever before, as the trees did, that one time, for 24 hours.
When I got home and had a chance to just lie down in my bed and stare up at the ceiling, my ceiling was also 3D.
Now, our ceilings have that 1970s popcorn look to them. I pretend they look like daisies so I don't see it as ugly like I would if it was just the stipple effect with no pattern.
Well, so usually, the ceiling looks like it's well above my head. I guess we have 8 feet ceilings, though we haven't measured them. My 6 feet tall kids can reach them, but I can't. So I am guessing they are about 8 feet tall ceilings.
Usually, I know a ceiling is there but I don't pay much attention to it.
This whole idea reminds me of a scene in the movie "Blast from the Past" with Alicia Silverstone and Brendan Fraser.
Brendan Fraser plays a character named "Adam" in the movie, and he has just shown up at Alicia's (Eve's) house. Adam is in a room with Eve's roommate, Troy. Adam looks up at the ceiling and tells Troy, "You have nice ceilings."
Troy says, "You like ceilings?" and has a perplexed look on his face.
Adam says, "Not particularly." He looks happy as he says it. It is just an amusing little scene in the movie. If you haven't seen that movie, see it. It's such a fun movie.
Back to my own ceilings. ... Well, my bed is standard height. I looked up at the ceiling and I felt like it was 3 feet away from me. I felt as if the ceiling was going to crush me. It was a bizarre feeling: to have cognitive dissonance about my ceiling.
Cognitive dissonance is something that means "two opposite thoughts held at the same time in your head." I know that the ceiling won't crush me. I know it's not falling. I know it's not just 3 feet away from me. But it looks like it's falling on me and that if I stand up, I will bump my head on it.
It was scary, and part of me said that I wanted to move RIGHT THEN - to a place with cathedral ceilings. It's very bizarre when you feel like your home is going to crush you.
Maybe I am in a movie kind of mood, but now I am remembering the scene from Star Wars: A New Hope, when the walls of the trash compactor threaten the heros of the movie.
I tried rolling over, I tried looking at a farther part of the ceiling. The whole thing was just really weird and a bit unnerving. I wasn't a fan.
Eventually, I went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning and could still see in 3D!
I took dogs on walks and enjoyed the new spring blossoms on the trees. It was interesting knowing when to dodge tree limbs rather than walk right into them, like I usually have in the past. I was grateful for that new skill!
About mid-afternoon, my eyes got very tired and felt like the muscles had been working too hard, and my eyes slipped back to normal. I was back to seeing the way I normally see.
The next day, I tried aligning my eyes again, to see if I could do the 3D thing again. The muscles in my eyes hurt when I tried. They had been overworked and needed a rest.
I thought perhaps that the next week at Vision Therapy, we would do the same thing and I would be able to get the magic 3D vision back, but we didn't.
My usual therapist, A, was there, and she is so gentle and calm with me. Her entire objective with me is to help me feel safe. She is exceptionally good at it. She is progressing slowly with me. It occurred to me that I just wasn't ready yet to see in 3D, since it made me feel like my house was crushing me.
Ever since seeing 3D, I have noticed that ceilings now have an arc look to them. They used to be a straight line to me, left to right. But now the ceiling line above me, in front of me (where it meets the wall right in front of me) is raised in a gentle arc. If I look to the left or the right, the arc goes down. The part where the ceiling has a corner on the left, the ceiling arcs down to the left. The part where the ceiling has a corner on the right, the ceiling arcs down to the right.
I asked a friend if this is what they see, too. "Do ceilings have an arc look to them? Or do they just look straight?" and my friend said that perhaps I am just perceiving space differently now. I think that's completely true. I am definitely perceiving space differently now.
Case in point - I can now park my car straight. Just in time to not be driving anywhere anymore thanks to Covid-19. I guess that's what "they" call "irony." Who? I don't know. Just "they."
It's true - a few weeks ago I went on one of my last grocery shopping trips before quarantining myself for what I think is now 6 weeks or more. (I have lost track.) And I got out of the car. I felt like perhaps my car was in the space differently, so I walked around my car and looked at it from all the angles.
This was the first time I have noticed that I parked myself perfectly in a parking spot. I wasn't 4 feet from the front, and I wasn't crooked from the side. A first! I am 40+ years old (creeping up on 50) and I have now parked straight maybe 3 times total.
I am definitely starting to perceive space in new ways.
[A cartoon photo courtesy of the Bitmoji app, of Jodi with short blonde hair and a floral shorts and tank top outfit on, lounging underneath a large daisy.] Mother Nature looks like she is in 3D!
I guess life got in the way again and I never got around to publishing part 3 to the "My World Changed for 24 Hours" set of blog posts.
So, here it is. Thank you for understanding that it's a few weeks late. Maybe in a week or two, I will go back and fix the date .... if I remember. To put it where it belongs (that blank week where nothing got published.)
Well, driving home from Vision Therapy the day I saw in 3D for the first time was quite an experience. Before I started driving, though, I think I sat in my car for about 2 hours. I just needed to get a little used to what my eyes were seeing before I could get on the road and start driving.
I sat and stared at the trees in front of my car, and the building under construction with its blue siding, across the way.
It reminded me of the first time I got glasses - I could see every leaf on the trees across the street from my house. I could make out every grass blade. It's quite a thing when your whole world is blurry and that's all you know. Then, one day, you get a pair of glasses & you can make out the leaves on trees!
This was kind of like that. Only, it was my EYES doing the work and not my glasses.
I could make out every tree branch and how they were in relation to me. "That one veers off to the left, that one veers off to the right. That one is coming right at me! Woah - it really is!"
I finally decided it was probably time to drive home, so I cautiously drove. It was one of those days when it probably would have been a better idea to have someone drive me. But I am not blessed to have someone who can drive me the 40 minutes or so each way to vision therapy. Oh, well.
I knew that if anything came in front of me, I would be more sensitive to it, rather than less sensitive, because everything looked closer than it usually does.
I drove on the side street then a Main Street and merged onto a highway to get home. There is always traffic on that highway, and I just stayed in the right lane. There is always construction and a LOT of cars on that highway, so we weren't going particularly fast. Whew!
At one point, I got off the highway and went to a store. I think Walmart to see if they had a quilt I have been needing. Driving through the parking lot on the way to Walmart, no one was near me. No one behind me, nothing. Then a car pulled in front of me and I slowed down to let it cross.
The car that came out of nowhere behind me honked. I looked again at the car in front of me. I had thought it was maybe 12 feet in front of me. I had completely misjudged it. (I may or may not have mentioned it on this blog, but I cannot measure space at all. Someone will say, "oh, it's about 100 yards that way." or they might say, "it's a quarter of a mile up the road." I can't tell that sort of thing by looking. I can't. I can't see depth and I can't estimate distance. There are things we aren't good at in life. It doesn't make us weak or a bad person. It' just something we can't do. I can't measure distance. At all.
Well, the car I had paused to let drive in front of me was not the 12 feet or so in front of me like I thought s/he was. It was probably 90 feet in front of me.
No wonder the car that came out of no where from behind me honked. Haha!
I pulled forward gradually and cautiously and the car behind me turned in to another lane to drive toward the store. Fine by me.
Well, later that night, I took a dog for a walk. It's my job. I walk dogs for folks who can't walk their dog, for whatever reason.
I picked up the dog like usual and we went for a little late-night stroll. We walked around his cul-de-sac. I was marveling at the trees in his block. They were amazing and so beautiful! I felt like I had never seen trees before!! I couldn't stop staring at these trees.
Now, I am a tree planter. I have had the privilege of planting trees all over Washington, DC with a fine organization called Casey Trees. www.caseytrees.org
The first tree I got to plant was by the ape enclosure area at Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, DC. The group I planted that tree with decided we would name it "Jane," after Jane Goodall. I visit that tree every time I visit the zoo. I love trees.
But I felt as if I had never seen a tree before this night, walking this dog. They were truly magical. The dog was so patient with me as I marveled at all the beauty surrounding us. He and I have spent countless afternoons and evenings standing next to those same trees, and yet I acted as if I had never seen them before. It really was quite astonishing.
I feel like this blog post is also getting to be too long, so I will need to go to Part 4 with this topic. I haven't even mentioned at all what it was like to enter my own house and look around, with this newfound 3D eyesight.
See you all next week. Stay home. Stay safe. Wear a mask - cotton + flannel. Wear gloves. Wash them as if they were your hands. Wash your hands too.
I don’t know about you, but there are too many times in my life when I go back to old memories and rehash them over and over. I am learning,...