When I was a little cross-eyed girl, I took many trips to my eye surgeon's office. He would take an occluder, a device that looked like a flattened spoon, and place it over one then the other eye while telling me to look at a target a little ways away. This "cover test" was a way to check eye alignment. As he moved the occluder from one eye to the other, he could see that the eye behind the occluder had not stayed straight as it should but turned in instead. As a little kid, I didn't understand what the doctor was testing, but I could tell from his expression and the concerned looks on my parents' faces that I was doing something wrong. I felt naked and exposed, helpless and confused. "What is it I should do?" I wanted to ask. "Just tell me what it is and I'll do it."
When I grew up, the last place I wanted to go was to the eye doctor's office. My three surgeries had made my misaligned eyes appear straight and my visual acuity was fine, but I still flunked the cover test and any test that examined the ability to see in 3D. Since I did not look through both eyes simultaneously but rapidly switched my gaze from one misaligned eye to the other, my view of the world was jittery. Yet, when I tried to describe my unstable worldview to one eye doctor, he dismissed my concerns. If the world seemed jittery, he told me, then I must have been traumatized by my childhood surgeries and should see a psychiatrist.
So, it was with great hesitation that I went to see a special type of eye doctor, a developmental optometrist, in my late forties. My optometrist, Dr. Theresa Ruggiero, gave me a host of tests that examined how well I used my two eyes together. But before she told me about the test results, she asked me what it was I wanted to do with my vision that I could not already do. I wondered if I could trust her. Could I tell her about my jittery worldview? I decided to take the risk.
Dr. Ruggiero listened carefully to my concerns, prescribed for me a new pair of glasses, and then started me on a course of optometric vision therapy. To an outside observer, vision therapy may seem like a collection of childish procedures involving beads on strings and red/green glasses. But for me, the therapy required intense concentration. To learn to stabilize my gaze and see in 3D, I had to break lifelong visual habits and learn new ones.
For a year, I visited my optometrist's office once a week and practiced procedures at home for half an hour every day. Soon, my initial reluctance to go to the optometrist's office was replaced with eagerness to attend the therapy sessions. I liked the vision therapists, the other staff in the office, and the general office mood and morale. I stopped feeling embarrassed when I struggled with a visual task that most children could easily accomplish.. As my vision changed and I gained the ability to see in 3D, my view of ordinary objects like sink faucets and light fixtures took on a whole new dimension. I could describe these delights without feeling ridiculous. I found I could trust my optometrist and her staff.
Once every six weeks during my year of therapy, I met with Dr. Ruggiero who would review my progress. Always, she made me feel ten feet tall. As I strode out of her office after each meeting, I saw myself in a new light. I was no longer a passive surgical patient waiting for others to fix my eyes. Instead, I felt in control. I had been given the opportunity and guidance to tackle a visual problem that had hounded me since childhood.
There was only one problem: I didn't think anyone would believe my story. I had been cross-eyed since infancy and had presumably missed a "critical period" in early life when stereovision develops. According to conventional wisdom, it was impossible to learn to see in 3D at the age of 48. Yet, my new view of the world was so surprising and so glorious that one evening, almost three years after I first saw in stereo, I wrote a letter about it to the well-known neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks. He wrote back asking if he could come visit. I called my optometrist in a panic. "What happens if Oliver Sacks comes to visit" I asked her, "and he doesn't believe me?"
Once again, Dr. Ruggiero filled me with confidence. She told me that there was only one person in the world who knew how I saw and that person was me. No one else had my eyes, brain, and body. "Just tell him what you see," she said. Oliver Sacks came to visit, I heeded her advice, and about a year later, Dr. Sacks wrote a story about me called "Stereo Sue" that appeared in the New Yorker magazine. Three years later, I wrote my own book.
To learn to see in 3D, I had to unlearn old visual habits and learn new ones. I had to rewire the visual circuits in my brain. To attempt to rehabilitate yourself is to take a risk. You must have confidence in your own abilities and trust in your doctor. The doctor who can instill such trust and confidence, who can make his or her patients feel ten feet tall, is an exceptional doctor indeed.
