When I gained 3D vision, the world expanded and inflated. Ordinary things looked extraordinary. I was captivated by the pockets of space between tree branches and liked to immerse myself in those pockets. "Look at that hanging light fixture," I would say to friends. "Do you see how it floats in mid-air?" Or I would point to the arc of a sink faucet that now popped out toward me and tell them that it was the most beautiful arc I had ever seen. To everyone else, these views were nothing out of the ordinary. They looked at me with a mixture of bemusement and concern. I began to wonder if I was going nuts.
So, for almost three years, I stopped talking about my new vision and kept my wonderful new views to myself. Then, one day in December, 2004, I decided that I must write down my story while it was still fresh in my mind. Fortunately, that evening, my children and husband got involved in a late night Monopoly game, so I retired to a quiet room in our house and wrote a long letter to the neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks. I had met Dr. Sacks briefly almost nine years earlier at a party, and we had talked about my lack of stereovision. He asked me then if I could imagine what it would be like to see in 3D. I had answered in a very off-hand way and told him that I thought I could imagine seeing in stereo. I taught all about stereopsis in my college classes and assumed that this knowledge gave me insight into what I was missing. So now, almost nine years later, I began my letter by reminding Dr. Sacks about his question, then told him that I had been wrong, and went on for nine single spaced pages about the wonders of stereovision.
The next day I showed the letter to my husband who encouraged me to mail it. I wasn't so sure. I had written the letter more for myself as a sort of journal. Besides, I didn't think anyone else would believe me. My acquisition of stereovision at age 48 after a lifetime of being cross-eyed went against all the conclusions drawn from a half century of research on "critical periods" in visual development. Even if Dr. Sacks believed me, I thought, he might not appreciate just how surprising and wonderful the change in my vision was. It would be pretty deflating to have him or someone else say "Well you've had an interesting experience but it's really no big deal." Should I take the risk? Should I mail the letter? I decided to give it a shot. I took the letter to the mailbox and dropped it in.
About a week later, Dr. Sacks wrote back and asked if he could come to visit. The next month, he and two of his friends, an ophthalmologist and vision scientist, came to my house. We cleared away the dining room table to make way for all the things that Dr. Sacks had brought with him to test my vision. I was surprised by his tools - some seemed like simple toys, not like the sophisticated equipment in my optometrist's office. The three visitors kept showing me one 3D picture after another and asking me what I saw. Once, after about an hour of this, I was looking at a difficult stereogram when Dr. Sacks put in front of my eyes a set of 3D glasses and a picture of a fish. I went nuts. "Whoa," I said, practically jumping out of my chair, "look at that fish! Look at its mouth. It's really sticking out at me." Then I stopped, feeling embarrassed. No self-respecting 51-year-old lady should get that excited about a 3D fish. Sheepishly, I looked over at Oliver Sacks, and he was looking right at me with this enormous grin on his face.
I think, at that moment, (though I don't really know for sure) Dr. Sacks put all doubts aside. He concluded that I really did gain 3D vision because no one could fake a reaction like that.
Since that time, I have had my vision tested by many other scientists and doctors. All of them have their pet theories or pet experiments that they want me to try. I always agree to their requests because I always learn something new. But sometimes, I think they miss the point. I wish they would think more broadly, beyond their particular experiment or theory, to what I try to tell them: that the acquisition of stereovision changed the whole way I saw space and experienced my surroundings.
Dr. Sacks went on to write a story about me called "Stereo Sue" which appeared in the June 19, 2006 issue of The New Yorker. He wrote the foreword for my book, Fixing My Gaze, and he encouraged me to seek out other people with vision stories similar to my own. For all this, I feel great gratitude. But I am particularly thankful to Dr. Sacks for considering me not as an oddity, an experimental subject, or an interesting case of two eyes and a brain, but instead for seeing me as a whole person who had experienced a fundamental, far-reaching, and unexpectedly joyous change in her perception of the world.
(The photo shows my otpometrist, Dr. Theresa Ruggiero standing, me sitting, and Oliver Sacks standing in Dr. Ruggiero's old vision therapy room.)
