The Autism Detective replay episode

I was a guest on Patricia Lemer's podcast entitled "The Autism Detective where I shared my vision development story. We disccussed vision as related to autism as well on this episode. This is a replay that she gave me permission to share on my podcast. Stay tuned for the next episode where I interview her.

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Transcript

Denise: Welcome to the Healing Our Sight podcast. Today I'm sharing a replay of the episode that I did with Patricia Lemer on her podcast. It's called the Autism detective, and I shared my vision development story with her and her audience, and so she has given me permission to share that now with you. Enjoy.

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Patricia: Hello. Welcome to the Autism Detective. This is Patricia Lemer, the author of Outsmarting Autism. Today I have as my guest a new friend named Denise Allen. And Denise is speaking to us from Utah, correct? 

Denise: Correct. 

Patricia: Hi, Denise. How are you doing?

Denise: I am doing great.

Patricia: Well, we have sun at least today here in Pittsburgh after a thunderstorm this morning. They say in Pittsburgh if you don't like the weather. Wait a minute.

Denise: So, I feel that here, too.

Patricia: Yep. And that works. So, Denise was introduced to me by my longtime friend, Doctor Elisa Beck, who is an optometrist whose podcast you might have heard me talk to her about a year ago. Elisa has multiple talents besides being an optometrist and actually is coming out with a new book soon, and we're all excited for her. So, Denise, you had a vision experience that you told Elisa about. That is what had her introduce you to me. You did vision therapy that changed your life, right? 

Denise: Correct. Yep. 

Patricia: So why don't you tell us. Tell my listeners, our listeners, about your visual history have lifelong visual issues and what happened to you and with you. So, I'm all pins and needles waiting for you to tell the story. It's a great story.

Denise: Okay. Thank you. Well, my vision issues surfaced when I was just shy of three years old. I woke up one day from a nap, and my eye was turned in, and my mom absolutely freaked out because I had not shown any real signs of that previous to that. My younger brother, however, was born very cross eyed, and he had already had a couple of surgeries on his eyes. And so, he took me right into his doctor, and he fitted me in glasses with bifocals. So, I was pretty nearsighted. And so, it was an accommodative type of esotropia. So I think some of most of your listeners may know what we're talking about, because you've had so many doctors with vision therapy previously, so I don't want to get too far into the terminology without clarifying that, but basically my eye was turning in and that was corrected with the glasses. So, they sent me on my way. I wore glasses till I was 15. At that point, I had dropped off the bifocal and was able to wear hard contact lenses because I did have an astigmatism as well and wore contacts from then on. But all of the associated issues that happen because you have esotropia and are not seeing in 3d were still, of course, there. I couldn't really play games that involved balls very well. I fell down a lot on the playground. I was always chosen last if we were playing games, because I didn't have a lot of coordination. And so, I compensated by just being a very good student and doing things that were more intellectual and not really participating in those kinds of physical activities.

Patricia: So what you thought, and your mother thought, and your doctor believed, was that everything was, quote, “fixed” because you were wearing glasses that somehow fixed this esotropia or this eye turn, but they had not addressed any of the concurrent symptoms, such as your awkwardness or your lack of coordination. And most importantly, you didn't have depth perception, correct? 

Denise: Absolutely, 

Patricia: but nobody cared.

Denise: I don't know if they didn't care or it was just accepted that that was all they could do. And so, I remember going in at about ten years of age, and they. I think that I was really triggered because we had kind of gotten a little accident on the way to the appointment, and I was kind of on edge. And they had me do the test where they asked you where the note is on the staff, and I was in piano lessons, and I was well aware that I should be able to tell what line or space that note was on. And I couldn't see it. I saw lines on one side with one eye and the other eye saw the note. And I said, well, do you want me to guess which line or space that note is on? Because the lines are over here and the notes over here. And at that point I realized I had. I had always been guessing. I had never told them. And they said, oh, well, you can't do that one. We won't ask you to do it again.

Patricia: Wow.

Denise: I thought, well, why is that? Am I supposed to be seeing something different? I mean, it was never addressed. They never said, oh, well, everyone else can do it, but you can't. But they kind of what they were saying in a roundabout way, you know, and they. They didn't really make great notes, and they. I still got those kinds of things in the future, you know? And so, it was very evident to me that I didn't see like everyone else.

Patricia: So, then many years passed. Were there any other incidents before you actually found out that there might be a solution to this problem?

Denise: Well, I mean, there were other difficulties, you know, like learning how to drive, but nothing where any hope was given. You know, it was. This is just how your eyes are always going to be.

Patricia: And your brother, he had some surgeries, didn't he?

Denise: He did, yeah. He had the first two when he was an infant and then one when he was seven, which is actually pretty common with infantile esotropia because they don't necessarily get the eyes aligned on first or second try.

Patricia: And getting the eyes aligned visually so that when you look at him, he doesn't look cross eyed anymore, doesn't necessarily assure that his brain is processing both eyes simultaneously, so that he probably didn't have depth perception either.

Denise: No, he didn't, and he still doesn't. His eyes were aligned pretty well, and, you know, and mine were aligned pretty well with the glasses, and so we got by fine. But there were always those times when my eye would wander if I was tired, and my mom would say, I can tell you're tired. She never said, fix your eyes, but she always said, I can tell your tired. And my brother, people would notice that he was looking in more than one place, right. And so, they would look behind them, or this didn't happen as much to me as to him for some reason, or maybe I just wasn't aware, they would look behind him, and they would be, you know, what? Who are you looking at? Kind of thing.

Patricia: So, one eye was looking one place and the other I was looking another place.

Denise: Exactly.

Patricia: Yeah.

Denise: But he compensated so well. And this, I think, is amazing that he played high school basketball. He played college basketball.

Patricia: No kidding. Wow.

Denise: That's a hard thing when you don't have depth perception. And he was a really good. He has always been a really good shooter. And I think it's muscle memory, you know, and just learning how to compensate from early on because he wanted to play so much, you know, it wasn't something that worked out well in baseball, but it worked in basketball.

Patricia: But as we've learned, just because the eyes look aligned, that vision is more than just the eyes. It's how the brain interacts with the eyes and processes the information the eyes are sending it. And if the eyes are sending it, separate two different pieces of information, then the brain can get confused, but it does learn how to compensate, as you and your brother are perfect examples of how that can happen. Wow. So, at what point did you. I hate to use this cliche, see the light? Were you introduced to another option?

Denise: So I was in my forties, and my presbyopia started to set in.

Patricia: Presbyopia. Define that for our listeners.

Denise: Right. So, the thing that old age tends to do to us where we can't see close up anymore and we need reading glasses.

Patricia: Right.

Denise: And because I had that additional rain on my eyes, my eye turn just kept getting worse. And to the point where instead of being noticeable only part of the time, it was constant. And I became very upset about having pictures taken. I didn't look myself in the eye in the mirror because it was upsetting to me. And I started avoiding situations where I would need to look at people and interact with them, which is basically life. Right. I was substitute teaching at the time in addition to teaching piano in my home. And so, every time I would go into a new classroom, the children have no filter, and so they would say, what's wrong with your eyes? And I would have to explain what was wrong with my eyes. And some days I was okay about it. Some days, not so much, you know? And there were. I even remember a time when one outspoken 6th grader raised his hand to ask me that question and blurted it out, and I kind of ignored him because that was not a good day for me to explain. And I felt bad, you know, because I'm like, I thought, here I have this opportunity to educate children about this issue that is prevalent everywhere and never talked about, and I'm missing the opportunity because of my own insecurity. And I started looking online for options of how I could fix my vision, and I came across natural vision improvement. I started doing these courses that were supposed to help me relax my eyes, and get them working better. And all the stuff, it didn't really address the eye turn specifically like I wanted it to, but I got rid of my astigmatism and I reduced my prescription, and I felt a little bit accomplished in that.

Patricia: And good for you. Did you do exercises?

Denise: I did, yeah.

Patricia: Was it on a computer or was it motor activities?

Denise: They were mostly motor type activities, relaxation types of things, which are helpful, and I still do a lot of those things, and I want to do more of that. Then I finally googled it again and I found vision therapy. And that's when I finally got into the doctor and had all of this diagnosed and he told me that there was something we could do.

Patricia: Thank goodness. And you were how old? 

Denise: 48. 

Patricia: 48. So you're like Stereo Sue? Who…

Denise: Exactly.

Patricia: Yeah. Who Oliver Sacks wrote about. And she wrote her own book called Fixing My Gaze. And we've talked about her, and she was just about the same age as you in her late forties, and she was.

Denise: Exactly. And so, when I read her book, at that point, I was determined I was going to be just like her. That was my goal.

Patricia: Right. She was your role model.

Denise: Yep. And my situation wasn't exactly like hers because my eyes weren't lined up at that point, but I was determined that I was going to make this work. And so, I did vision therapy. 68 sessions of vision therapy with no results that we could measure.

Patricia: No, Wow.

Denise: You know, it's a couple years.

Patricia: So discouraging. Oh, my goodness.

Denise: Yeah. And then my doctor sat me down. And he said, what is your goal? Because he knew that my eye turn was really bothering me. Is your goal just to have your eyes look straight, or do you want depth perception? And I said, I want all of it. I want my eyes to look straight. I want to see in 3D. I want to have my normal vision, you know?

Patricia: Right. And how was this affecting your life? You were driving and you were a successful piano teacher. So, you know, devil's advocate, why did it matter?

Denise: You know, that is such a good question, because it does take a lot of drive to go through all of this. And I just wanted to be normal, you know, I wanted not feel like I was broken, like I wanted. I looked at all of the ways that she described the magic of 3D in her book, and I wanted that. I wanted to see everything in that magical way.

Patricia: Right. So, what did you do next? After 68 sessions without success, 

Denise: I took a break because my doctor said, I don't think there's anything we can do at this point unless you wanted to have surgery. And I didn't want to have surgery. There were so many horror stories about surgery gone wrong, and it was like giving up on vision therapy.

Patricia: Yeah.

Denise: So, I just said, well, let's see what else you can come up with. And so, I just kept doing some things at home, and we waited a little bit longer, and he did Syntonics training..

Patricia:  And we've talked about Syntonics, which is light therapy, different colored lights. And how long did you do that for?

Denise: Well, he wasn't qualified in Syntonics at that point in time, so that's why I took the break. And so, he did the training, and he was super new at it. Right. And he called me up and he said, I just did the training, and they told us not to do this on our hardest patients, but we're going to do it anyway.

Patricia: uhuh

Denise: And so he sent me home with some of those glasses that have the different colors filters on them, and I was supposed to sit outside with those on and for a certain amount of time, and I'm not a very patient person, and I don't like to just sit and do nothing either.

Patricia: Right.

Denise: So, it was really hard for me to want to do it, but I did. I mean, I did it, and it just didn't really feel like it was doing anything for me. And I was back in therapy. I had another 20 or so sessions, and there was still nothing really changing. I could feel like something should be changing, but we couldn't measure anything changing.

Patricia: Right. And so you eventually did have surgery? 

Denise:  At that point, Yeah, I finally said, okay, I'm just gonna have the surgery. So, he referred me to the doctor he'd worked with before. We did the surgery. And after the surgery, it was like magic.

Patricia: Well, now the surgery took, was it on what, just the one eye?.

Denise: They did both eyes.

Patricia: They did both eyes. And what did they do? They tightened up the muscle so that the eyes looked straight.

Denise: Well, I don't know if you would say tightened up or loosened.

Patricia: Oh, okay.

Denise: Because they do. They do all the muscles. Right.

Patricia: I see. Okay.

Denise: Adjust everything however they adjust it. I am not the person who analyzes all of the. The details of what they exactly did. They did both eyes, all the muscles, and I shouldn't say all the muscles either. I don't even know. But he did what he needed to to get my eyes aligned. And after the surgery, I took a homeopathic remedy called Arnica. In lieu of the drugs that they gave. I took, like, one painkiller, did not do good things to my body. And I said, enough of that, and I just did this homeopathic remedy. I went back a week later, and he said, I can't believe how fast you're recovering. And I said, awesome.

Patricia: Yay.

Denise: And I went right back to vision therapy. I was back at work after four days, also at the computer. I was selling insurance, so it was people calling in, and that was really safe, a safe place for me. So I went back to work, and then I went back to vision therapy, and everything worked. At that point. I could do all of the things on the virtual reality program, and all of the other activities were just easy for me at that point, because my eyes were lined up.

Patricia: And so now how long ago was that?

Denise: It was 2017.

Patricia: So five, six years ago. And now you're. Do you continue to do exercises and activities to maintain it?

Denise: I do a little. I don't have a super specific regimen that I do all the time. I should probably, but it's kind of not my personality to do that, I guess.

Patricia: And are you wearing glasses?

Denise: I wear contacts.

Patricia: And then do you wear reading glasses or that was fixed?

Denise: Well, the reading glasses part of it was something that was addressed with the natural vision improvement. I feel like.

Patricia: Wow, this is such a great story. Denise, I know that you have children and other family members who have had some of the same issues, and we need to take a break. And when we come back, maybe we can talk about some of the why this runs in families and then some of the things that you did in vision therapy and how it has improved your quality of life, okay?

Denise: Yeah. Great. 

Patricia:  All right. You're listening to the autism detectives. We'll be right back.

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Patricia: Welcome back to the Autism Detectives. My guest today, Denise Allen, had a life changing experience with vision therapy and some surgery to correct esotropia or an eye turn that she'd had lifelong. Now, Denise, you talked about your brother and his struggle with crossed eyes early on, and you have children, and your brother has children. There are family members who have this. You want to tell us about some of them?

Denise: Sure. I actually have five brothers.

Patricia: Whoa.

Denise: My next younger brother was the one who had the most significant esotropia. But of all of my brothers, four of them have binocular vision issues and mostly some amblyopia. They did some patching. They were sent on their way as if everything was fine for them, too.

Patricia: So, amblyopia, for our listeners who are new to this, is a lazy eye. So first comes the strabismus, or the esotropia or exotropia, and the eye turn, and then the eye gets tired and sort of shuts down and turns off the messages it's sending to the brain, and that's called amblyopia. Sorry to interrupt you. Go on.

Denise: No, I appreciate that you're defining all of that for your listeners. I could do a better job of that, probably. So, one of my brothers, the one that I mentioned before, his son, also has basically the same thing, was never really addressed other than with patching.

Patricia: Patching is really a traditional ophthalmological approach to lack of binocularity. And they patch the good eye and try to make the lazy eye or not so well functioning eye step up to the plate and do the job. And sometimes that works. But when you take the patch off the good eye, you don't assure that those eyes know how to play together. And that's the beauty of vision therapy, is that it teaches the eyes to send the brain the same message at exactly the same time so that the brain isn't confused, and can act on it.

Denise: Right. Yeah. And I think that the thing that makes me the most frustrated is that people will go to the ophthalmologist and they're given these standard treatments and not.

Patricia: Patching or surgery without the vision therapy.

Denise: Yeah. They don't work together. The doctors just don't cooperate very well.

Patricia: I know. It's really sad, isn't it?

Denise: Yeah. I feel like they're not living up to their Hippocratic oath. You know, you really need to be willing to put the patient's needs ahead of your own as a doctor. And I feel like a lot of times that's not what they're doing in their practices. And whether they want to plead ignorance or whatever, I think that that's something that needs to change in our medical system.

Patricia: Right. So, you have a nephew or two or three that with, similar issues. But like their parents, they haven't taken the extra step to do vision therapy. They're just muddling their way through.

Denise: Right, right. Yeah. And now that that son of my brother has a daughter that also is in that situation.

Patricia: Whoa.

Denise: Yeah. And I thought my family was good. And then when I took my kids in for their regular checkups with my vision therapy doctor, because I was finally in the right place, then I figured out that I have a son with really significant convergence insufficiency.

Patricia: You want to say, what's that?

Denise:  we didn’t find it until he was 15.

Patricia: Oh, wow.

Denise: And a daughter that was mini me.

Patricia: So, convergence insufficiency. Convergence is when you become cross eyed, your eyes move together as if they're attached by a string. They move in toward the nose together, and we're constantly doing that as we're adjusting our vision to different distances. So, your eyes are closer together when you're looking at near like to read and they're a little further apart when you're looking out in the distance. And the further out in the distance you're looking, they go further and they diverge. But the convergence  insufficiency means that they have trouble moving in together efficiently, as is required to read and to write and to focus at near.

Denise: Right. And it was frustrating because his teachers knew he could do the work. We all knew he could do the work, yet he wouldn't do it.

Patricia: Yeah, well, he was struggling. And when you're struggling to do something, it's hard to push through the pain.

Denise: Exactly. It was just almost impossible.

Patricia: So, he, like you didn't know everybody else was doing it without. Without the impediment that you guys had.

Denise: Right. And so, if he did an assignment, he'd get an a. If he didn't do an assignment, he'd get an f. And there was nothing in between for him. And he didn't do a lot of assignments, you know, so we didn't find out that he had until he was 15. And by then it was very difficult to get the buy-in for the vision therapy.

Patricia: So how old is he now?

Denise: He's 28.

Patricia: Oh, my goodness. And what's he doing?

Denise: He's driving. He likes to do things where he can see in the distance, right?

Patricia: Uh huh.

Denise: So, he has a limousine-type service and he likes to do that.

Patricia: And how about your daughter?

Denise: My daughter, we found out when she was ten that she was just like me.

Patricia: You had your mini me daughter.

Denise: She had gotten glasses at age three, and that had seemed to solve whatever issues she had. And I asked my doctor when I was just finding out about vision therapy, my regular optometrist, I said, can you check my daughter? And he checked her and he said she was fine. And he said he knew about vision therapy even, and still said that. And I still really wonder about that. . .

Patricia: Yeah.

Denise: Diagnosis. Right. So, when I took her into my vision therapy doctor, Doctor Jared Davies, and he indicated that we got her right into therapy as well. And she responded beautifully, and all she needed was the vision therapy.

Patricia: Well, and how long did she spend in VT?

Denise: Year and a half, maybe. It would have probably been faster if she had been really good about doing her home exercises.

Patricia: Yeah.

Denise: She admitted that I had her on my podcast, and she, she disclosed that to my audience.

Patricia: So that was very, you mentioned your podcast. All of these experiences, personal experiences, triggered you to educate other people and share them with the world. And so how long ago did you start a podcast?

Denise: It was 2020.

Patricia: So, we need to take another break, Denise. So that timing was pretty good. And when we come back, let's talk about your podcast and how people can listen to it. It's called what? Healing Our Sight? Yeah, Healing Our Sight podcast with Denise Allen. So, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, Denise will tell us about how to listen to her podcast and how to get in touch with her. You're listening to the Autism Detectives. Stay tuned.

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Patricia: Welcome back. This is Patricia Lemer with the Autism Detective. My guest, Denise Allen is telling us about her remarkable experience with vision therapy, becoming binocular and having a three-dimensional vision. Denise, it's a great story. You're the new stereo. What shall we call you? Stereo Denise. Like Sue Barry and Fixing My Gaze. And so, you started this podcast called healing our sight, even though we're talking about vision because it really affects all aspects of our being. Talk about your podcast and how people might find you.

Denise: Yes. I was searching for what I could do to really make some kind of a difference in sharing my story, and it occurred to me that it might be easier to listen to the story than to read about it. I had a blog going, and I wasn't super active on my blog that I wanted to be doing something that just kind of fueled my passion, you know? And so, 2020, right before everything shut down with COVID, I started my podcast and shared my friend's story and then my story and started finding other people who I knew had been actively sharing their vision therapy journey.

Patricia: And you've had a couple of people on your podcast, same ones that I've had on mine, of course, Elisa Beck, who is the one who introduced us, and Sarah Lane, who is a really good friend. And Sarah talks about vision development and how it affects babies and what happens, as you've experienced, if you don't address the developmental issues and how it's tied to the motor issues that kids have. And what's her first name? Rosen.

Denise: Wendy.

Patricia: Wendy Rosen. We've both had Wendy on, and you've had people talk about Brain Gym, too. And you had the Campbells on.

Denise: Yes.

Patricia: Yep. And I've had, I can't remember who I had on for Brain Gym, but I've had a couple of Brain Gym people, and Brain Gym's remarkable at integrating the two eyes and the front and the back and the top and the bottom of the body. And so how do we find you? How do we find healing our site podcast?

Denise: Yeah, it's going to be on every major podcast player. Actually, I find most of my listeners happen to have Apple podcasts, and so that's a popular one, but it should be on just about all of the players that are out there.

Patricia: And what do you go to? Is it Healing Our Sight? One word, or is it your name? Denise. A l l e n.

Denise: I hope it comes up either way, but it is just the three words, Healing Our Sight.

Patricia: And this is similar to this where you interview someone informally.

Denise: It is, yeah. I've only done, I think, one episode that was just me talking. Most of them have just been an interview, and they last between 30 and 60 minutes on average.

Patricia: Uh huh. And if any of our listeners want to come on their, your podcast, how would they get in touch with you?

Denise: I have a Facebook group. It's also called Healing Our Sight. So, they can join that. They can message me there. I have a website that's called healingmysite.com. I'm getting ready to make a website for the podcast to be housed on as well. That's coming. And we just want to create community and the ability to share what we know about how our vision can be improved. And, you know, the success stories that want to come on and share. And there's so many other different kinds of therapies that people can do in conjunction with vision therapy that really add. And I just want to put all that information out there in accessible format.

Patricia: And you've interviewed people who have done some of those therapies. We mentioned Brain Gym, also cranial sacral therapy. You interviewed somebody about that? Talk about that a little bit.

Denise: Yeah, I had a friend come on that had done that a while ago. She's not going to give all of those details that you would get from talking to a practitioner necessarily, but she did talk about how just doing that therapy made such a difference in her traumatic brain injury.

Patricia:  And the traumatic brain injury, also known as a stroke, often affects the visual cortex, and people lose a field of vision, and they're sometimes not even aware of that. Right, right.

Denise: Yeah. Well, and I did interview someone who had suffered an ocular stroke. That was even my first episode. But this particular friend, she had had a head injury from playing soccer.

Patricia: No kidding.

Denise: So, it had happened more than once, even.

Patricia: Right. Concussions from soccer affect your vision frequently.

Denise: Yeah.

Patricia: And many of our kids who are playing soccer every day, every week from a young age, when their brains are still developing, have this repeated trauma to the brain, which is affecting their vision unknowingly.

Denise: Right. Yeah. And so, she didn't understand that that's what the issue was for a long time, you know, and then when she finally addressed it with the vision therapy and the cranial sacral, because that vision therapist was referring, you know, it made a huge difference.

Patricia: Wow.

Denise: Yeah.

Patricia: And so, another thing that affects vision you and I haven't talked about is vaccination. And one of the doctors that I know suggests that parents take a really close up picture of their children's eyes in their face, like almost right on top of them, pre and post vaccination, because sometimes that can cause an eye turn, a strabismus which is a big word for an eye turn. And you called it an esotropia because it turned in. And when you woke up at age five, I wonder if that could have been what caused your eye turn.

Denise: Yeah, it was right before I was three. It's possible that that could have affected it. I don't know that my mom ever put any of that together.

Patricia: Right. And at your age, we didn't have so many vaccinations when we were growing up, as kids are having today. And so, it's really important that parents understand that an eye turn may be a result of a vaccination and that it's good to document it. 

Denise: Right. Yeah. And I love in your book how you talk about the toxic load, you know, and it's like, it may not have caused it specifically, but the load became too great.

Patricia: That's a really important fact. I'm glad you brought that up. This total load idea that if vaccination caused autism or vision issues alone, every kid would have them because we're all vaccinated. But it just is what happened before that that makes you vulnerable. So, Denise, we need to take our last break, and when we come back, I'd like to talk a little bit about Asperger's, which isn't a term we use very often anymore, but you and I talked about it, and I think it would be helpful for our listeners to hear about some high functioning autism and vision issues. So, you're listening to the Autism Detectives. We'll be right back.

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Patricia: Welcome back to the Autism Detectives. We're talking vision today. Vision, vision and how Denise Allen, an adult, did vision therapy, plus some surgery to finally, after 50 years of life, get binocular vision and depth perception. Denise, it's quite a story, and I love that you're out there with your podcast, Healing Our Sight, to help people understand what's going on. When you and I first started talking, you asked me about Asperger's, which is a term not used so much anymore, but which was used to talk about high functioning autism. Our more verbal, sometimes brilliant people who are single-mindedly inflexible. Do you know anybody like that?

Denise: I do, actually, yes. It's so funny because I have avoided the labels my with children completely. So, I never took any of my children in for any kind of evaluation with regards to that. And I thought, you know, they had their idiosyncrasies and stuff, but I didn't think that there was anything specifically.

Patricia: You say labels are for cans, not for people.

Denise: Uh huh. Yeah. And so, I. I never did anything about that, but my oldest daughter got married to a man who had been diagnosed with Asperger's.

Patricia: Oh, really? So, she knew that before she married him?

Denise: She knew, yes. And interestingly enough, they didn't share that information with me until the night before the wedding, because I guess they  were concerned what my reaction would be. It wasn't like I hadn't figured out there were things going on with him, you know?

Patricia: Right. So, she knew, you know?

Denise: Yeah.

Patricia: And she knew what she was getting into, huh?

Denise: Somewhat. Yeah, I think she did.

Patricia: And is she on the spectrum herself?

Denise: She had never been diagnosed.

Patricia: Right.

Denise: For years in their marriage. They've been married for almost, well, about nine years. They had this back and forth all the time where he would say, you know, you're just like me and you should go in and get tested. And she would say, no, I don't want to go get tested. 

Patricia: Good for her. 

Denise: She went ahead and got tested just so he would stop bugging her about it, you know? And they told her she was also on the spectrum, that she had Asperger's, too.

Patricia: Wow. So, you know, what did that do? So what? You know what? They knew that. And.

Denise: Yeah, yeah. Well, and so I was frustrated by that. I thought, well, why? Why do we need to put this label and say she's like that, too? I don't see the point. And the thing that came out of that, though, was that when she said to him, I can't do this right now. I can't drive right now. I'm overstimulated. I can't take care of whatever, a phone call, whatever it is. He needed to respect that at that point because he could have that knowledge, I guess, that she was just like him.

Patricia: Yeah. Well, I wrote a paper on the relationship between Asperger's and vision a while back, and it was published in the Journal of Behavioral Optometry, because I think that these are, first of all, the most missed of our people on the spectrum. Some of these super high functioning people who actually can do well if they find the right career and often have trouble socially because of their inflexibility and their behavior and their single mindedness. And if we can loosen up their vision and make their vision a little more flexible, we know that we can make the behavior more flexible. And that's a real challenge, is to get them to do the vision therapy. They say, I'm okay. I'm neurodiverse. I'm just fine. You need to respect me and my quirky sensory processing. And if we can lighten them up, we know they're easier to live with and they find life easier to live. Would you agree with that?

Denise: I totally agree with that. Yeah, absolutely. And my daughter actually has some convergence insufficiency, too. Well, mild.

Patricia: Yeah. But we also know that there's concurrent issues that are going on. Like, most of these Asperger type behaviors are male, but we know that in the females, like your daughter, we sometimes see some physical issues, like high mercury toxicity or high levels of testosterone. And if you can find a doctor who understands these and can detoxify the heavy metals, including not just mercury, but maybe aluminum, and fix their thyroids and get their B6 and magnesium balanced out. This is all the work of Bernie Rimland and some of the more current doctors who are doing a biomedical approach to autism, who I've had on this podcast. And that really makes a huge difference.

Denise: Right.

Patricia: Has your daughter been healthy?

Denise: She has actually been pretty healthy. I'm thinking about what she's doing now in relationship to that, because she has decided to go gluten free, and that helps.

Patricia: Uh huh.

Denise: I think she's taking some supplements that she's finding helpful. She hasn't had it evaluated on that level, though, just to speak to the fact that the females are not diagnosed, though.

Patricia: Right?

Denise: Not only was my daughter diagnosed recently, but so was my friend's daughter. And so we're saying. Oh, that explains a lot about how they socialized when they were in high school and younger, you know, or lack there the lack of the socialization because we could really see that in hindsight.

Patricia: We call that 2020 hindsight.

Denise: Yight. yeah. And then my daughter has four children who also exhibit these Asperger tendencies and they're homeschooling them. So, I have a lot of concern that comes up about, okay, what can I do to help that situation?

Patricia: You. Well. And then that raises the question, well, maybe it's genetic. Look at all the people in your family. But maybe there's something in the water or the air or the food that everybody's eating, breathing, sleeping around that is environmental and not so much in their genes because it takes some environmental trigger to make these things express themselves.

Denise: Right.

Patricia: So, Denise,, go on.

Denise: I was just going to say there's so much that goes into the whole picture that we can't take all those considerations and mesh them together in a way that we can have an answer, really.

Patricia: So, we're almost out of time. Tell our listeners how to reach you and how to listen to your podcast.

Denise: Yeah, so my podcast is on most every podcast player at Healing Our Sight. And they can reach me on Facebook, on that Facebook group. I'm happy to respond to those direct messages there and I’d love to have some more guests on my show.

Patricia: Well, Denise, this has been so informative and interesting, and I wish you lots and lots of luck. I'd love to come on your podcast. We can talk about all kinds of things. I know we're on the same page.

Denise: Absolutely. I look forward to that.

Patricia: Okay, so thanks again. And I think it's spring, so happy spring.

Denise: Thank you. You too. I'll be glad when the snow melts out there.

Patricia: Ok. So good luck to you.

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Denise: Thank you for listening to the Healing Our Sight podcast. I'd love to hear from you. If you like this episode, please share it and please join our Facebook community at Healing Our Sight to leave suggestions or comments. Have a great day.