The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 58 trips to carry that many people.
Filed under Uncategorized
Thumbs up to sunlight!
New research an eye opener on cause of myopia – CNN.com.
A recent study from Australia shows that 10 to 14 hours of sunlight per week may reduce a child’s chance of becoming near-sighted. Interestingly enough, in Australia wearing hats is required at primary school and is encouraged for outdoor activities.
Differences in the prevalence of myopia have been found between countries. The differences seem to relate to high levels of myopia in highly urbanized, academically focused countries with an emphasis on early competitive education systems versus low levels in less urbanized and/or countries with more emphasis on learning through play at an early age.
Click the link above for the CNN interview.
Filed under EyeWorks, Uncategorized
Fishing the Contoocook River with my dad.
For those who don’t know me so well, I am quite bah humbug when it comes to greeting card holidays. I don’t know why really, but I usually roll my eyes when Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day roll around on the calendar. But I recognize the apparent reason for these days as many facebook users changes their profile pictures to reflect upon the ones they love and it becomes a day of tribute and possibly celebration if you’re near those loved ones.
Wikipedia says that Congress refused to make Father’s Day an official holiday in 1916, fearing that it would become commercialized. Coincidentally, Hallmark Cards began in 1915. Actually it was probably no coincidence whatsoever, but it wasn’t until 1966, that President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.
Father’s Day can be easily taken for granted if your father is still with you. Most of the tributes online and in newspapers that I see are referencing the passing of their dads and what they remember and miss about them. My wife lost her father when he was only 59. That was seven and a half years ago. I know she misses him every day and I hope I can make enough of an impact on my little girl so that she thinks of me often too.
So I thought since I don’t buy greeting cards anymore anyway, that I would share a few thoughts about my father on Father’s Day.
Growing up, my daddy was always there. His career didn’t require that he travel often. The trips we took were together in the car or van, or whatever we had at the time. If we weren’t going to the lake, we might take a two week vacation. One year we drove up along the east coast as far as Wildwood, NJ. Another year we drove up to Seattle and back down the northern California coast. I don’t know if I’ll ever do that again, but I’ll never forget those trips.
He taught me my love of football and baseball, taking us to Astros games in Houston every summer. Sundays in the fall were spent watching Randy White and Tony Dorsett run all over the field while we cheered the Dallas Cowboys on to victory (most of the time). It wasn’t always teaching in the classic sense, as much as it was me observing and absorbing things along side him on the way.
He was our little league coach and a designated “super coach” during a football game in my senior year. We won the city championship and the football game.
We built a fence together in the backyard of my great-grandmother’s house one summer. You could tell when it was done that it was built by a banker and a future optometrist, but it was fun anyway.
I have yet to pick up his love of fishing. He’s out fishing right now for big bass on Falcon Lake in Zapata, TX. Probably trying to reel in an eleven pounder and no longer as excited about those 7 to 8 pounders he catches so often. I regret not being able to get down that way so often to pull in some big ones myself.
I am proud of my father. He’s worked hard and now he and my mom live a very comfortable life. And he plays as hard as he works, never forgetting the importance of a frosty mug to complement that cold beer.
But mainly, it was that he was always there and still is even though I’ve moved to the northeast. Since I became a father, I have made choices
depending on whether or not it would take time away from my daughter. She and my wife usually win out when I’m trying to decide how to split my time. And fortunately, my career doesn’t have me traveling very often either and some fathers just need to do that.
He and I aren’t very sappy, touchy-feely kind of guys. In fact, I don’t even feel the need for him to comment on this post. That’s not the point. It was just something I felt like doing on Father’s Day. bah-humbug.
Filed under Uncategorized
A near perfect fit of a CRT (corneal reshaping treatment lens) which should give great vision upon removal.
Quite a busy day at EyeWorks today (Wednesday). Every Wednesday morning we start off with a staff meeting and for the 3rd week in a row, we’ve introduced a new member of the team. Kelley joins the team as an optician. Laura started last week as a member of the front desk welcoming committee. And Kim from the Illinois College of Optometry began her fourth year externship with us about three weeks ago as our very first student extern. She will be with us until early August.
All are doing a great job getting acclimated to the way we do things. Kelley and Laura have no previous eye care work experience and that’s usually just the way we like it. We like to look for intelligent, caring people that can blend in well with the staff and can be molded in to our philosophy of patient care. We are asking them to learn a ton of information and they are doing a great job.
Kim comes to us with 3 years of optometry school under her belt and she has done an outstanding job helping us with patient care. If you did not know, optometry school students go through four years of classroom and clinical training after obtaining a bachelor’s degree. We are happy that she chose us to begin her fourth year. We plan on giving her plenty of real world experience with practice management exposure that you just can’t learn in school.
Last week, I ordered her some lenses known as CRT or ortho-k lenses. These are rigid contact lenses that you apply to the eyes at night and they gently reshape the front curve of the eye to reduce your near-sightedness and astigmatism. I checked her vision first thing this morning and she was easily reading 20/20. I may need to make some slight modifications to the lenses to make them fit even better, which should result in even better vision. The use of CRT lenses is completely reversible and research has shown that the use of the lenses may reduce progression of near-sightedness in young patients. The photo above is an example of the way the lenses should look after instilling fluorescein drops behind the lens. It presents a great alternative (much less expensive) than LASIK surgery also.
We hit the ground running this morning with a full schedule of patients and it wasn’t long before we were running behind schedule. We had Jeff from Safilo frames in the office promoting his line of frames which included Hugo Boss, Kate Spade and Fossil. I didn’t have time to promote the specials we were running on our Facebook page either, so that was kind of a blown opportunity. Not proud to admit that.
Right before lunch, I had another patient who came in with chronic frontal headaches that she’d been dealing with since October. She had seen a neurologist who ruled out any brain or sinus abnormalities. I went in to vertical phoria mode and sure enough, she had a history of motion sickness, inability to watch 3D movies, history of migraines and some neck and shoulder soreness. We spent a great deal of time discussing my findings related to her poor eye muscle coordination and I prescribed some Anti-Fatigue Lenses from Essilor with both vertical and horizontal prism which I am confident will give her a great deal of relief from her headaches.
Due to the length of that visit, my lunch hour became a 12 minute lunch break. But that’s how it goes.
The afternoon was just as busy with an airline pilot from Ohio who flew a corporate jet for C & S Wholesale Grocers here in Keene, NH . He had heard about the new HoyaVision My Style progressive lenses that uses lifestyle questions and precise digital free form lens surfacing to specifically design the way that his progressive lens will work for him.
And I really enjoyed the visit from a husband/wife team who were completely unaware of the superior scratch resistance of the Hoya Super Hi Vision EX3 lens treatment that rivals the scratch resistance of glass.
Other patients deserving honorable mention include Lisa, a fellow Texan whose family has a ranch near Victoria, TX. We had a great discussion about the benefits and safety of LASIK surgery.
So we kind of saw it all today at the office. Tomorrow’s schedule (Thursday) looks a bit lighter, so give us a call at (603) 352-7803 if you’d like to be seen for an eye exam. Friday and Saturday’s schedule are pretty much full and I’ll be looking forward to relaxing on Sunday.
Stay cool if you live here in the Northeast, we are supposed have record heat in to the mid-90s tomorrow. Makes me really miss central air conditioning!
If you’d like any more info on any of the topics mentioned above, feel free to send me a question through the comments section below. And be sure to subscribe to my blog to be updated on the latest eye care info.
Filed under binocular vision, Contact Lenses, EyeWorks, Headaches
This post was done about a year ago with the title “Ten things I’d tell new grads after 10 years of practice”. I decided it needed an update…
Eleven years ago in May I graduated from the University of Houston College of Optometry. We had to wait two months to get our license to practice. It was during that two month break that I took a cruise with my wife to Bermuda (my first cruise and her third).
I’ve always believed that I learned more in my first six months of practicing in the real world than I did in four years of optometry school. And it was on that cruise that I realized how I wanted my practice to run (though I didn’t know it at the time).
So let’s see if I can come up with 10 11 pearls of wisdom for new graduates…
1. Develop guidelines, not policies. Be flexible. It’s really not that difficult to make most patients happy. Some may have unusual requests, but if you can make them happy they won’t even think about going to see anyone else.
2. I wish someone would have stood up at our graduation, maybe with a bull horn, and told us to pay down our student loan debt as quickly as possible…before buying that first house and that shiny new car. Even though I listed this as #2, it’s the first bit of advice I give to any new grad. It’s advice that I regret never receiving.
3. No matter how young you look coming out of school, it’s easy to look like you know what you’re doing. Look every patient in the eye, early and often. And give them a firm hand shake. They want to see your confidence right away so that they can relax and pay attention to you.
4. Show appreciation to your staff. I’ve never been as good at this one as I’d like to be, but it’s very important. But I’m working on it, despite what they may think!
5. Don’t expect everyone you work with to be a clone of yourself. It took me years to get over this one.
6. One of things I learned on my very first cruise is that you can run your business like everyone else and be like everyone else, or you can run it differently and be that much better. During our dinner services onboard the cruise, I couldn’t believe someone was coming up to our table with a special little instrument to wipe the crumbs off my table. It reminds me often of this pearl #6. I don’t expect the crumb sweep as part of an average meal anywhere else, but it sets you apart if you do it.
7. Read a book or two 12 on customer service. Don’t expect any real success unless you figure out the importance of it, because you will not learn it in school. Any fresh graduate can do a refraction and get a glasses prescription right most of the time, it’s the rest of the experience in your office that counts.
8. Get involved in the community. I didn’t learn this one right away.
9. Don’t just hire people with experience. Hire nice, intelligent people and teach them what you want them to do. Some of the worst people I ever hired had terrible habits that they had developed from years of “experience”.
10. Never stop learning something new. A lot of us left school with a good understanding of the eye, but not always the greatest understanding of vision. They are two separate concepts. And if you don’t know them both, you may have a lot of people leave your office with unsolved vision problems. Been there. Done that.
11. Don’t forget the importance of evaluating binocular vision. Patients will come back to see you and refer family members because you have given them a prescription that allows them to see comfortably and reduces those annoying frontal headaches. None of my mentors shed light on the impact of a little bit of prism added to an Rx. I’ve been fascinated by the difference it can make, especially with vertical deviations.
So there you go. Ten Nine years from now I will hopefully have at least 20 pearls of wisdom. Have a great weekend!
Not all Pink Eye is the Same.
I came across a very informative All About Vision article about pink eye today that I’d like to share with you. The medical term for pink eye is conjunctivitis. This common eye condition can have more than one cause including bacteria, virus, allergy or foreign object irritation. Treatments vary depending on the cause. We recommend you don’t use Visine-type products as mentioned in a previous post.
Here at EyeWorks , we can usually see you right away if you start to experience irritated eyes and we’ll even call in the prescription for you if you wish.
So here is the pink eye article which includes a nice handy summary courtesy of the same website that you can print out if you are a school nurse, teacher or parent.
Pass this on to your parent and teacher friends and loved ones. If you haven’t already, subscribe to my blog and follow us also by clicking here to Become a Facebook fan!!
Filed under EyeWorks
Well, what do you know, how did I miss the announcement of May being Healthy Vision Month? Maybe because every day to an eye doctor seems like healthy vision day where I feel like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day who re-lives the same sequence of events over and over. Thankfully though, I thoroughly enjoy what I’m doing and experience something new with every patient encounter.
One of the hardest things to see is a patient who comes in with an irreversible or difficult to treat eye/vision problem that they had tried to live with for too long. And because they waited so long to get the eyes checked, there are only very limited options available to help.
So in recognition of the last week of Healthy Vision Month, I thought I’d give some recommendations to help you maintain your own healthy vision.
1) Schedule annual eye exams. We check the health of your eyes inside and out and look for problems that you would never have a clue could be happening to you. You don’t have to be “old” to start losing peripheral vision from glaucoma or develop a cancerous tumor in the back of your eye. Early detection and treatment of problems can help save your sight and possibly your life.
2) Eat your fruits and veggies. Especially leafy green veggies like broccoli and spinach to get the essential eye nutrients we all need. If you don’t, take a supplement with lutein.
3) Eat 2 to 3 servings of fish each week to get omega-3 fatty acids in to your system. Known as a natural anti-inflammatory, it can help with dry eyes and early signs of macular degeneration.
4) If you’re like me and don’t eat enough fruits, veggies and/or fish, I’ve started recommending a new product from Alcon called I-Caps Lutein & Omega-3. Available over the counter and taken only once daily, it can be the perfect substitute for the 1 a day vitamin that many of us take (or at least that many of us have sitting on the counter).
5) Mix in some green tea instead of Coke Zero. The bottle of green tea I’m drinking right now only has 34 calories per 8 ounce serving. A study published last year in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry concludes that phytochemicals found in green tea actually penetrate deeply into tissues of the eyes. This is the first report to document how the lens, retina and other parts of the eye absorb the powerful antioxidants and disease-fighting substances found in green tea. It strongly raises the possibility that green tea can prevent glaucoma as well as other eye diseases and conditions.
6) Eat more beef jerky. Just kidding, I love beef jerky. And I have learned how to make it myself using top cut sirloin and my food dehydrator. Munching on it right now actually. However, there are conflicting opinions on the effects of red meat in relation to eye health. JoyBauer.com (nutrition expert) writes that both niacin and zinc found in red meat may help protect against vision problems. Niacin guards against cataracts, while zinc helps prevent and treat macular degeneration. But scientists report in the May American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that there appears to be an elevated risk of cataract development in those that eat the highest amount of red meat. Oh well, not enough to stop me from enjoying my home made beef jerky though.
So do I practice what I’m preaching? The beef jerky debate aside, I have virtually eliminated my daily 20 ounce bottle of Coke Zero for Honest Tea’s varieties of green or white tea. I keep the Alcon multi-vitamins handy, and try to remember to take one at least every other day. My intake of vegetables has gone from virtually a non-existent intake as well. Since right around Easter Sunday, I have incorporated asparagus, spinach, mushrooms, carrots, parsnips and broccoli in to my daily menu for the truly the first time in my 39 years of life. Although I’m not sitting here craving a stalk of asparagus, I have to admit that these veggies are not near as bad as I would have imagined. As my Dad always said…you can’t really taste them anyway. And no, I’m not slathering them in butter or cheese either. For me, it’s just been a matter of getting over the whole texture part of it, for the good of my eyes and all that. And by mixing these in and drastically reducing breads, dairy and pastas since Easter Sunday, I have lost about 8 pounds around the mid-section with very limited exercise.
But back to the subject of you and your eyes…
Awareness is the key. I envision a future in which all my patients over 50 years old have practically disease-free eyes. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get our patients to be more proactive with these recommendations so that we won’t have to watch them slowly develop common eye problems like macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy? No doubt easier said than done, but not impossible. It adds a couple of minutes to the exam, but could save us both lots of time down the road where I might be explaining vision loss that could have been prevented.
Do you take supplements with Lutein or Omega-3s? Let me know which ones you prefer?
I am not a student of fine art and although I appreciate the talent involved in being an artist, I never developed appreciation for much of anything that adorns the walls of the world’s museums of fine art. That may change someday. Who knows?
But the topic of this post really has little to do with art, or at least not the art of painting. Pablo Picasso painted this picture to the left and what got my attention was the exaggerated placement of her eyes, one higher than the other. My google search of Picasso’s works reveal multiple paintings of women, most of whom have one eye set noticeably higher than the other. Photos of Picasso seemed to reveal that he had one eye higher than the other also, but that’s hard to tell based on a snapshot.
And that leads me to my latest obsession with my patients, so to speak, which is the frequent diagnosis of what’s called a vertical heterophoria. The lady in the painting has it and so far two of my patients this morning have it. I’ve sat on this topic for a couple of months because I wanted to compare the similarities between the patients that have this condition before reporting on it. So here goes…
As I’ve written about in earlier posts, vision is complicated. The front of the eye has to focus light directly on to the retina in the back of the eye just like the movie projector has to focus it’s light directly on to the movie screen. If the light is focused too far in front or behind that screen (retina), the image will be out of focus. But just as important for clear vision, is the eyes’ ability to work in unison and aim on a level plain with each other (binocular vision). If the eyes are not in sync, visual acuity can get worse.
I will admit that in my earlier years of practice, I simply didn’t understand the importance of binocular vision. We had classes on the subject in optometry school, but I recall that they were, well…boring beyond belief. None of my clinic instructors emphasized the importance during my early patient encounters, and so I learned how to go through an eye exam without worrying too much about how well the eyes worked together. Then after graduating, I went to work in a busy practice and often skipped that evaluation altogether giving what I thought were thorough eye exams. But I had just oversimplified the complicated nature of vision and, for the most part, made most all of my patients happy.
But every now and then, I think back to some of the patients in which I never really could figure out why I couldn’t get them to see a little better. And now I think I know why…they had a problem with their binocular vision and very likely a vertical heterophoria.
************So here’s where it gets good and hopefully you’re still with me. Here’s the typical patient scenario of a patient who I diagnose with a vertical heterophoria:
Most of these patients complain of eye strain and headaches, especially related to near activities. They may call them migraines and they may often be light sensitive both indoors and outdoors.
Most of these patients have a history of motion sickness or at least admit to difficulty reading in a moving vehicle and most likely they hate riding in the back seat of a moving vehicle.
Most of these patients have developed some sort of compensating head tilt towards the left or right shoulder. I believe this tilt is used to level out their visual world just like we’d see the bubble move on the level when trying to hang a picture straight on a wall.
Most of these patients admit to a history of neck and more likely shoulder pain on only one side (left or right). They are no stranger to chiropractors or massage therapists. Older patients additionally have lower back pain that has worsened over the years.
Many younger patients have been diagnosed with reading or attention deficit difficulties. I’ve seen patients with this condition under 10 years old who already see a chiropractor regularly. Are you kidding me???
Some of these patients become very uncomfortable in places crowded with lots of people.
Many have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome. They have tried all sorts of ways to manage their pain, yet nothing has really helped. Since looking closer at this vertical deviation, I have yet to see a patient with either of the diagnoses that did not have a vertical heterophoria.
These patients tend to be grumpier and just look worn out. Technicians and staff may dislike dealing with them because of this, even if they’ve been with the practice for years.
I’ve seen a couple of patients with a history of scoliosis who were diagnosed. Is there a connection? One study I found seems to think so.
Six members of the staff have it. My wife has it. And I have a mild one also. And I suspect my mother-in-law has it too. She HATES riding in the backseats of cars, especially in the mountains of Lake Tahoe when I’m driving. But that’s another story…
So I don’t know if I’m on to something big or on to nothing at all. But there are some incredible similarities amongst these patients. I’ve said it before, every decision we make in our life is based not on what we see, but how we see the world. If our world is not level, the brain tends to dislike that and will find a way to compensate. Why not a head tilt? Do it all your life and why wouldn’t your neck or shoulders start to feel the effects of it? Why wouldn’t that translate down to your back?
***(Edit: Forgot to include this section in original post) So I try to help them by prescribing prism oriented vertically, either base up or base down. I do quite a bit of trial framing in the exam room in order to make sure the patients can handle this new part of their prescription. Usually it’s only as small as 0.50 diopters, so I only prescribe it in to one lens. If it’s a higher amount, I will balance it between both lenses. Usually, they will be back shortly with family members to tell me how they’re doing. After just two months of doing this and losing count of how many times I’ve done it, I’ve only had to remove the prism once (talk about jinxing myself). Two people have told me they haven’t had a single headache since then. At this point, I don’t schedule them back for follow up visits but I’m thinking about changing that.
I’ve contacted two local chiropractors and their interest is lukewarm at best. I’m hoping I can sit down with one soon to see if any of this makes sense to them based on their training. I would love to team up with one or all of them to help people with pain, if possible.
So that takes me back to Picasso. Did he deal with this problem himself? I couldn’t find that he had any reported history of any of the conditions I listed above. But it was thought that Vincent van Gogh’s was possibly painted that way because he was near-sighted. If anyone knows more about Picasso, please let me know.
In the meantime, check out this website: www.vsofb.com. This is an eye doctor in Michigan who has made a living helping patients with this condition. She has a ton of great information that helped me look further in to this.
Thank you for reading and please contact me with any questions.
Filed under binocular vision, EyeWorks, Headaches
I have a request from a reader named Kindle who is wanting some information on eye color genetics for a term paper. So although I don’t consider myself an expert in eye color genetics, I hope these links to other websites will be helpful.
According to this website: http://www.testsymptomsathome.com/GTI11_eye_color.asp eye color is thought to be determined by 6 genes and the more dominant the alleles, the darker the eyes will be.
This website http://museum.thetech.org/ugenetics/eyeCalc/eyecalculator.html actually has a calculator that if you know your parents’ eye color and your mate’s parents’ eye color, you can predict the eye color of your offspring.
Here is another eye color calculator http://www.angelfire.com/clone2/advancedbio/ to compare to the one above, although it doesn’t seem to take in to account the grandparents’ eye color.
Discover Magazine had a short article in their March 2007 publication indicating that there is no single gene for eye color. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/eye-color-explained
And this article from MSNBC claims that blue eyes are the result of a genetic mutation that originates from a single common ancestor. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22934464/ns/health-health_care/
I hope this is helpful to you Kindle!
Filed under Uncategorized
Vision, that is. I realize it more and more every day with my own eyes and the patients that come in seeking help for their eyes. Oh sure, it can be simplified and over-simplified. Many people, including eye doctors do it all the time. ”My vision is perfect…I can see 20/15!” Well that’s great if you’re going to be a professional eye chart reader, but I’ve never seen that listed as one of the more high demand jobs on Monster.com. And on days like today when I have a couple of gaps in the schedule, I get the chance to really reflect on this and come up with a new blog entry.
After doing this for 10 years, I feel like I’ve become quite an expert in fitting contact lenses for all sorts of needs, treating medical eye problems that do not require surgery, and helping patients see well with their eye glasses. But I wonder sometimes if I can call myself an expert in understanding vision? Especially after 10 years. I guess it depends on how one defines expert. Dictionary.com defines expert as “a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; a specialist; an authority.” Actually after reading this definition, I guess I can call myself an expert on vision because this definition isn’t really all that impressive.
So why am I being so hard on myself? Here’s an example of why: I had a really sweet little 10 year old girl yesterday who was having all sorts of underachievement issues academically. She had undergone extensive testing at school and problems were ruled out and suspected problems were suggested, including vision-related deficiencies. She had become labelled and it was deemed that she qualified for special education considerations. She had some symptoms related to vision, so that’s what I needed to look closely for. But after a half hour of testing, I couldn’t put my finger on any specific problems related to her ability to focus near or far or any problems related to the ability of her eyes to work together. I explained this to her mother, who thanked me for my time and they left somewhat relieved that I didn’t find a major problem. But I still suspected there was a problem related to vision, I was just disappointed that I couldn’t find it.
So I couldn’t find a vision problem, what’s the big deal??? I should be content with that. Well, honestly I think I couldn’t find it because of my lack of complete understanding of the “complications” of vision. What part of the visual processing was fouled up in this little girl? Why did she reverse her letters? Well, because she might have dyslexia…Well, why does she have dyslexia?!?!? Open can of worms now..
So in a continued effort to become more of an expert on vision and its complications, I decided several months ago to do something I swore I’d never do. Study and go through a very lengthy testing process to earn a Fellowship in the College of Optometrists in Vision Development, a group of eye doctors and therapists specializing in vision care services that can develop and enhance visual abilities and correct many vision problems in infants, children, and adults. The trouble with this plan is, I’m not much of a reader (and never have been) because of my own recently discovered vision complications.
Here’s why I swore I’d never do this: I got through grade school and 10 years of college because I had at least a half a brain, but it wasn’t until I made it through school and started working with the public that I really started to flourish in this career. Reflecting back, you probably know someone just like me… One of the smartest kids in the class through the fifth grade, the best speller in ALL of Schallert Elementary. But on to middle school…and book reports and other longer reading assignments dropped me down a few notches. Their was less memorization and more reading comprehension and math word problems. Like many before me and after, I adapted, and was still looked at as one of the smartest in the class. But it was almost as if I felt like I wasn’t as smart as I used to be, because it was getting harder to remember and comprehend all the additional stuff. Before I became an eye doctor, I figured it was due to distractions like girls and sports. We didn’t text or surf the internet in the 70s or 80s, so for me there didn’t seem to be any other excuses.
Fast forward to only two years ago and I discover that my eyes don’t aim together well without a decent amount of effort…they’d rather rest pointing away from each other horizontally and one higher than the other. So I think back and wonder if that’s why my perception of the difficulty of school changed. Is that why I never hit much better than .200 in baseball? I didn’t make up the phrase you can’t hit what you can’t see. Is that why my high school coach moved me to first base so that I would stop over running fly balls in center field. Is that why I had to work so hard to catch a football while on the run (or standing still for that matter)? Think about it…our eyes tell us where every thing is positioned in the world around us. If my eyes told my brain to tell my arms that the ball was an inch away from where I thought it was…swoosh…swing and a miss or football on the ground. And those of you without these issues, have no concept. But I hope, especially that it makes sense if you have or once had “perfect vision.”
I may continue on with this topic tomorrow. The gaps in my schedule filled in after I started this, plus this post is getting too long anyway. I could go on and on and on…
Did I make it complicated enough for ya yet?
Filed under binocular vision, Headaches, Sports Vision
