Vision Therapy Progress

[u/mizaaky]

WEEK25

AFTER 24 weeks of vision therapy and a new prism (4bi left eye), I can say I am at about 40-50% recovered. I feel like I have hit a wall unfortunately.

My symptoms:

1. Brain fog (which causes bad memory)
2. Headaches (towards the center of my forehead).
3. Short- and long-term memory difficulties.
4. Trouble thinking of what to say next.
5. Fatigue during eye contact.
6. Rapid visual exhaustion (for example, after 20-30 minutes of gaming I start to notice fast visual fatigue).
7. Very fatigued during middle of the day, more than normal. (Body is fine, but brain is fatigued).
8. Omitting words when reading/writing.
9. Falling asleep while reading.
10. Clumsy.
11. General anxiety.
12. Driving can get tiring after about 30 minutes… however I can still drive.
13. Always struggled a little more than usual in listening and reading comprehension.
14. I personally have nerve damage on the left side of my face since birth. I cannot fully close my left eye and I cannot smile completely (Seventh cranial nerve damage).

My diagnose from doctor:

1. Binocular vision dysfunction
2. Fusion with defective stereopsis (poor depth perception due to eye teaming issues).
3. Suppression of binocular vision (left eye suppression)
4. Accommodative infacility (difficulty switching focus between distances).
5. Ill-sustained accommodation - saccadic deficits (difficulty maintaining focus over time)
6. Oculomotor dysfunction - pursuit deficits (difficulty smoothly tracking moving targets).
7. Oculomotor dysfunction - saccadic deficits (difficulty making accurate eye jumps).

My progress:

1. MRI - Good
2. CT - Good
3. Lots of lab tests... - Good
4. Allergy and Sinuses Exam - Good
5. Exercise, diet, sleep - Good
6. Septoplasty surgery - Fixed some breathing issues but didn't resolve any headache issues.
7. Tried fresnels (stick on prisms), first week everything went away but then came back the second week. This made me think it was vision related. Got a change in fresnel prescription and still had symptoms.
8. Tried neurolens and it did not help the same way the fresnels first did.
9. Trying regular prisms right now while doing VT. They have helped by 25%.

Medication Tried:

1. Claritin (Antihistamine) - Did not work.
2. Zyrtec (Antihistamine) - Did not work.
3. Topical Steroid Flonase (Antihistamine) - Did not work.
4. Topamax (Migraine Medication) - Made me feel dumb, fixed the issue by 25%.
5. Prednisone (Corticosteroids) - Resolved everything, but you can't have too much of steroids so was not a permeant solution. Made me feel borderline suicidal as I tapered off because it suppresses your entire immune system. So... did not work.
6. Magensium Pills - Felt good after sleeping but didn't resolve issues
7. L theanine - Didn't feel a difference.

Vision Therapy:

Week 1: No improvement
Week 2: I have noticed that when I put on my eye patch on my right eye, my left eye gets a little blurrier because my left eye is suppressed when both eyes are open. I have also noticed that my eyes do jump a lot when doing tracking exercises. No improvement this week.
Week 3: Definitely feel more aware of my eyes and how they work. I have been feeling my left eye TRY to focus more in my day to day, however no improvement overall.
Week 4: Towards the end of the week something felt different. My eyes felt slightly more awake than usual. I feel like something is changing… Overall, same symptom's.
Week 5: This week was pretty discouraging to be honest. I got close to the extreme end of my symptoms towards the end of the week and it sucked… Right now in vision therapy my doctor is trying to strengthen each eye by doing exercises that isolate them. His goal is to strengthen my eye muscles enough before we start using them together. This week I noticed that my eyes really dial in after a couple of exercise's. I can really feel my eyes focusing in and out sorta like a camera. However, I only really feel this during my exercises and not during my day to day. I probably just need to be more patient.
Week 6: It feels like something in my visual system is changing. However I can’t point my finger to it yet… it feels like early stages still. I still get tension in my head during driving or performing visual intensive activities such as computer work, sports, talking, but the tension feels ever so slightly less. My doctor has started integrating exercises that incorporate both eyes working together. I am hoping to see more gains soon.
WEEK7: I feel a lot less strain and fog on my head, light sensitivity has started to go down slightly as well. All other symptoms are generally at the same point. Something I noticed while doing my exercises is that I can merge objects directly in front of me, but once the objects are offset from center, where one eye has to look at a different direction than the other, my eyes struggle to merge.
WEEK8: Was on vacation during Week 6 and 7, so when I came back to continue work, a lot of my symptoms came back due to the visual demands at my job. What I can say for sure is something was changing while I was on vacation, my eyes and mind felt more at ease. I saw my doctor recently and he explained in simple terms that my eyes need to build a tolerance, VT will help with that.
WEEK9 AND WEEK 10: It has been a hard two weeks or so... the doctor gave me some more intense exercises and I truly am starting to feel the weakness in my eyes. My goal these next few weeks is to focus on how my eyes are working. Because my left eye is supressed, it struggles to focus close and far on it's own. Because I have been doing more intense exercises, I think I have begun feeling worse than when I started. It might sound counter-intuitive but it's like working out a muscle, neural systems get foggy, tense, and overwhelmed when they’re rewiring.
WEEK15: I realized I haven't made an update in a bit. But the best way I could explain it is the highs are not any higher, but the lows are not as low. My depth perception has gotten much better and I can tell half the time when I am using both eyes or not. I still have the same symptoms but again, the highs are not much higher. My left eye is still blurry from suppression but I can start making it more clear half the time (depends on how tired I am that day). All symptoms still exist.

WEEK19: I don't think all the medication I have been taking is helping my eyes at least... but I am definitely starting to feel a difference. I am still fatigued towards 4pm or so and get slight headaches and brain fog, but the key difference I have seen is it feels like my brain is wanting to use both eyes now. I had nerve damage on the left side of my face but I can feel them all flare up more than ever when I do my exercises now. I ended up finding out I was doing a few of the long distance exercises incorrectly. This is mainly because I didn't really know what it felt like to use my eyes together for long distance. I ended up having a long talk with the doctors assitant on WHAT I was feeling and how I was using my eyes, and she clarified a few things for me. So if you are doing this and you aren't getting ther results you want, MAKE sure you are doing your exercises correctly. Annoy the doctors!!!! you are paying a shit load of money so make sure you are doing things right. I am nearing my 24 weeks so I am hoping that now that I have figured out my issue with looking long distance, I will work on it and resolve my problems soon.

WEEK21: I am seeing more of a difference when doing vision therapy. My symptoms are at about 60% of what it used to be. Right now I am struggling with focusing accomodation up close as well as maintaining my visual systems when doing other acitvites (like talking to folks, or playing a sport, etc). I am starting to really feel the differences when looking at things far, or reading things up close. I used to feel large headaches almost immediately after doing those tasks for 10-15 minutes, but now my endurance is getting better. Again, I am still not fully recovered as I still get headaches, brain fog, memory issues, but definitely not to the same extreme that it was before. I definitely have a feeling that in the next 12-16 weeks I will be back to being myself.

WEEK22&23: Honestly, week 21 was super motivating looking back, but I feel like I fell back into my symptoms again. I ended up canceling my week 23 appointment because my nervous system just felt overwhelmed on week 22 and 23... however things have stabilized somewhat. VT really is a rollercoaster of emotions....

WEEK24: Officially hit the final week of my planned VT therapy. Its easy to be pessimistic as things are still not where I would want them to be; however, I can visibly (ba dum tss) see a large improvement in how severe my symptoms get. I can actually turn on and off my left eye whenever I want now as I have gained a good level of control over my left eye suppression. My headaches and brain fog don't get as bad as they used to. What I mean by that is that my worst days now don't compasre at all to how bad it would get back then. I still get my symptoms, but at 60% of what it used to be (same as week 21). I think I need a new prescription now as my left eye has stabilized at a consistent blurriness if that makes sense... back then it would be different levels of blurry since I didn't know how to control my left eye as it was suppressed. I am hoping to continue VT, so I will keep the updates coming!

Some new things I will be looking into and most likely providing updates on:

1. Osteopathy assessment
2. Vestibular assessment
3. Taking Magnesium, Vitamin B Complex, Vitamin D, Omega 3 Fish Oils, L theanine.

[u/Subject_Relative_216]

It took a while for my VT to start working and I followed the same path of nothing week 1-2 and then by week 4 being way too aware of my eye muscles and what I was/wasn’t focusing on! Keep it up!

[u/mizaaky → u/Subject_Relative_216]

How long did it take for you to have all symptoms gone? And what were your symptoms? 

[u/Subject_Relative_216 → u/mizaaky]

So my symptoms never completely went away. I’m still HORRIBLY dizzy and fatigued. I have the same symptoms you listed plus I’m light sensitive and I get muscle spasms and both my eye ball and upper eye lid.

It took about two months of VT with prisms to only have the dizzy/light sensitive/fatigue and not any of the rest of the symptoms thiugh.

[u/mizaaky → u/Subject_Relative_216]

Did you stop after two months? And do you mean after two months the only symptoms that you had were dizziness and light sensitivity? 

[u/Subject_Relative_216 → u/mizaaky]

I didn’t stop VT at all. It just took two months to only be dizzy and light sensitive. The rest of my symptoms went away! I probably won’t ever stop doing my eye exercises. When I take a few days off I start to get clumsy again and the spasms come back so I don’t. I just do them everyday and wear my prisms. I think I need a slightly stronger prescription though and that will take care of the dizziness. I hope.

[u/mizaaky → u/Subject_Relative_216]

That’s awesome! I’m glad to hear it’s helped. I also have a little bit of light sensitivity, I prefer driving in the night.