Vision Therapy home resources with Chris Daniels

Denise discusses vision therapy success principles with Chris Daniels, who created his own therapy studio in his basement. You can see a guided tour of his basement on his new YouTube channel, entitled "me vs meyeself." Chris also has a convergence music video included on his channel, which is a fun challenge.

Basement tour link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whjzZQ3P0r0&t=2s

Chris’ 3D video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN2b4I2y8pk

Chris’ YouTube music channel:

www.youtube.com/@CryllicFonn

"Don't Quit" poem, attributed to Edgar Guest, that Chris references:

https://allpoetry.com/poem/14327858-Don-t-Quit-by-Edgar-Albert-Guest

Click the link above to message me directly. It comes to me as FAN MAIL! How great is that? Just click on the place that says, "If you liked this episode CLICK HERE:"

Transcript

Denise: welcome today to the Healing Our Sight podcast.

I have a guest, Chris Daniels, who I found out about because of Dr. Leonard Press's blog, VisionHelp.

That blog is mostly for doctors, but there are some very interesting tidbits for patients as well. So the article that Dr. Press wrote was entitled Me, Meyself and Eyes, A Remarkable Home Vision Therapy Video.

And in that article, Dr. Press indicated that Chris has a new YouTube channel entitled Me versus Meyself.

And in his first video, Chris takes us on a tour of his basement where he has set up an amazing home therapy studio. And he does an amazing job of showing the activities and why and how he is able to do all his vision therapy in his own home.

And I know that all of my listeners are going to want to see this video, so I'll put a link in the show notes.

So. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hi.

Denise: I have a handful of these activities that you've got in your basement, but I cannot believe how you've just gone all out on this studio you have down there.

Chris: Yeah, it's all stuff I learned working at wow. Vision Therapy. And I've been at it for several years. So things have kind of collected over the years, and I knew I was up against a big challenge, so I figured I'd need a lot of equipment and I was in it for the long term.

So, yeah, it just kind of built up over the years.

Denise: How many years are we talking here?

Chris: So I started vision therapy in 2021. It's been roughly four years. So I just graduated last October in 2024.

So I started at the beginning of 2021 doing two sessions a week.

And then after a while, I don't remember if it was later that year. The next year I went down to one session per week, and then I moved to about a couple sessions a month.

And then later on in 2024, I actually only went in the office a couple times the whole year, but the whole time I was in contact with them. My vision therapist was Dr. Alicia. So we would email back and forth and I would let her know what I was working on and how it was.

So the whole time during those four years, I was pretty much always doing vision therapy on my own, whether or not I was going into the office.

And I would take a little bit of a break using the winter time, maybe December through, I don't know, March, because in Michigan the winters get kind of harsh. And it really wasn't that important that I fight the weather to go into the office all the time when I could just continue doing things on my own.

And she had given me so many things to do that it would just keep me busy even if I didn't come in for regular sessions.

So that's pretty much the time frame of it.

Denise: Okay. That's so dedicated. I'm just amazed by that. Yeah, that's really great. What was your visual situation before you found vision therapy?

Chris: Well, right before vision therapy, I mean, it's kind of a lifelong story, but before I went in, what I had was an eye that would turn out. Even though I was either born or as an infant, I had an eye that turned in. So before I went into vision therapy, I never had any depth perception my whole life.

And my eyes were ... a lot of times they were straight. But my eye turnout, I know, was getting worse as I would age.

But the real reason I went after all this was headaches. I have had migraine headaches my whole life, even in elementary school. I can remember coming home from school in the evening with a headache, and those seemed to be getting worse.

I have a job where I work on a computer all day long, which is a lot of eye strain. And my headaches were because of eye strain, because my eyes would just kind of fight each other all the time.

So that's kind of where I was.

I could drive a car fine. I have an astigmatism, and I see light glares at night pretty bad. So in addition to having depth perception, driving at dark was kind of a challenge.

Driving in the rain and the snow and the fog, those were all really challenging. But other than that, I could drive fine. I could ride a bicycle. Like, I could do whatever I needed to do.

I could not play sports, but as far as visually, I mean, I could do my job just fine.

So it was really the headaches that drove me to vision therapy.

And I thought if I could straighten my eyes and gain any sort of depth perception, that would just be a bonus.

Well, it turns out all of that eventually happened. It didn't come easy, but it did happen. So the visual situation, it was mostly that I didn't have depth perception. I always had full peripheral vision using both eyes.

But it's my left eye that is my stronger eye, and that's the eye that I would use most of the time.

Denise: Okay, so it sounds like you were esotropic at birth. Is that what I'm hearing?

Chris: Yes. Okay.

Denise: And then did you have a couple of surgeries?

Chris: Yes. So I had two surgeries. I had my first surgery at age two and a half and my second surgery at age five.

And this is in the mid to late 70s. So back then, there was no vision therapy. That wasn't an option. So it was either surgery or nothing.

And then obviously my parents noticed I had a really severe eye turn, so they took me to see an eye doctor who performed the surgery. He was actually my eye doctor from then until my mid-20s until he retired.

And my mom told me that he said to them right away that I'm going to need two surgeries because it was kind of such a severe eye turn.

So both surgeries were both eyes.

The first surgery was the inner eye muscles. The second surgery was the outer eye muscles.

And if anything, it may have overcorrected a little bit.

But after the surgery, if I look at my pictures, my eyes actually looked really straight from then on.

And of course, I don't remember any of that. I don't remember before the surgery. I can kind of remember waking up in the hospital in the second surgery, but I don't really remember what it was like before surgery.

So as far back as I can remember, when I would look in pictures, my eyes would look fairly straight. I always had to wear glasses my whole life. I remember that too.

But since my eyes look straight, my parents just assumed everything's fixed and everything's normal. My eye doctor, who at the time, who did all this, he never used the term depth perception.

He never used the term binocularity, stereopsis. I never even knew any of those terms for well into my adult life. So my parents didn't know I didn't have depth perception.

Obviously, I didn't know. Nobody knew. They just think your eyes look pretty straight.

Everything must be fine. But I always had a tendency for my right eye to turn out.

That's when that started. And it would happen when I would get tired or stressed, but most of the time, my eyes would look fairly straight and no one would even know that I ever had strabismus.

That the average person wouldn't even notice.

Denise: Right.

I think that that's a common thing for those of us who've gone through this.

I've talked to several people who had that overcorrection situation too. You know, you start out with your eye going in, and then you're overcorrected to turning out later on and causes all kinds of other issues.

Right?

Chris: Yeah. Surgery is somewhat of a guess because they do the best they can as far as aligning your eyes, but you also don't know how your brain's going to react to that.

So that kind of alters the results as well. So it's almost like you hope for the best.

So. Yeah, but I think it was a good thing because there's also a history of strabismus in my family.

And I have another family member that had the same situation. And he had eye surgery as a child, but it was done a little bit later, and his eye went amblyopic to the point that he has no central vision in that eye.

And they think it's because if you wait too long to do the surgery, that the brain stops using that eye more and more and more and it just kind of shuts it off.

Whereas that never happened for me when if I would close my stronger eye, I still had full vision in my weaker eye. It's just that they wouldn't really work well at the same time.

Denise: Right. So I think that that part of it is so individualized also. And yeah, many people are able to wake up that eye that hasn't been useful, but that's a whole different set of problems that have to be addressed as you're going through therapy.

So how did you actually find out that there was a thing called vision therapy?

Chris: That was kind of more of a matter of Internet searching. No one told me about it, despite all the many eye doctors I've been through my whole life, because I've always needed at least a new glasses prescription. And of course, every time you go to the eye doctor, they can see that I have an eye turn.

I know all the time in the past when I've done the eye cover test, I always remember my eyes would just jump every time they would cover each eye. And I was always used to that.

And it's kind of weird because that doesn't really happen anymore. I didn't learn probably till my mid-30s, that I didn't have depth perception. And the eye doctor I went to at the time, we were talking about it, and he actually told me about Sue Barry.

And that was the first time I've ever heard of that. He referred to (her) as Stereo Sue, of course.

And he explained that later in life she had gained the ability to use both eyes together and gained 3D vision. But of course, he said to me, it's a one in a million chance that that could ever happen to you.

So hearing that, of course, I didn't really pursue it any.

And then how was the story of how I really found vision therapy? What happened at the end of 2020?

My headaches were really getting bad. And I really was thinking about having a third eye surgery because that's all I knew. I thought maybe, well, that would fix it. So a local optometrist referred me to a surgeon here locally, and I actually went to talk to him and I actually had all of my eye doctor records from when I was a child up until my mid-20s, because when my eye doctor retired, they sent me all those records.

So everything from my surgery and every visit that I had. So I brought these records with me to the surgeon. So he had all my history, had all the technical terms, so he knew everything.

And then we talked a little bit and he actually, he dilated my eyes. And this is kind of weird where you know how they do that and they love to shine that light in your eyes and look around.

And he says, oh, there's kind of some scarring inside your eye. I guess they went a little deep with the sutures and I thought that's a little weird.

So we were talking about the surgery and what he explained to me is the more times you do surgery, the harder it gets to do and the less predictable the results, especially as you get older.

He said, every time you do a surgery, there's going to be more scar tissue that you have to fight with and there could be other issues.

And he was willing to do the surgery. He said, I think it might help. But he said we could do the surgery and it's possible that after a few years the eye turn could just come back.

And I appreciate that he was honest about that. And so I thought, well, this just doesn't sound like a solution.

So I didn't do that. So what I did is I got on YouTube and I started looking at all these videos of people who are adults who had strabismus surgery. And what I wanted to see was the long term results, like a year later, follow up, five years or more. And it's harder to find those videos because they don't always follow up.

But I found some videos and some of them would talk about going on to vision therapy after they had their surgery. And then I started getting interested in more of those and I started getting interested more in the vision therapy because it sounded like it might be another option and I didn't know anything about it.

So the more you look into that, then you start getting videos that are vision therapy offices that actually provide vision therapy. And one of those that came up was WOW vision therapy. And I thought, well, they're not that far away from where I live. So I just have to go give this a try.

So I went in and met with them and did an evaluation and it kind of took off from there. But to answer your question, it's basically was my own searching that I found it.

In all my years and all my history, nobody ever said, you need to go get vision therapy.

And there are local optometrists that will refer patients to WOW. I don't think I've been to any of them, but I've heard of them. So that does happen as well.

Sometimes people get referred, but I didn't, I just, I just went there, so it worked out.

Denise: That's nice that you live close to where they are too, because they're a really good office.

One of my other guests, Hannah Vandermeulen, was also a patient there. I had her on in April of 2023. So I know that they are doing great work and sending people my way too, to share their stories.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, they're awesome there.

Denise: We love that. So now that you've gone through all these years of therapy and you see in 3D, I guess you're feeling like you're in the maintenance mode. Is that what you would term what you're doing now?

Chris: Yeah, I am in the maintenance mode. And I kind of think, I would say I've really achieved all my goals. And anything that I get beyond this is just bonus.

There's a lot of times where I kind of have to concentrate to use my eyes together. It's not bad, but I have to be conscious about it. And I would just like to get that to be as natural as possible, so where I almost don't even have to think about it anymore.

And I'm starting to get close to that. But I think I can get a little better, make a little bit more progress and just, you know, just keep practicing. But I intend to keep doing all my therapy activities, at least for the foreseeable future.

And I don't do them anything like I did when I was going through therapy. I mean, it could be easily a half hour a day or more, whereas now it might be a few minutes here and there just to, like you said, do some maintenance.

But if I can gain a little bit more progress, I'd like to.

I'm doing really well where I'm at as far as the headaches are concerned. That's not even an issue anymore. So that was the biggest goal achieved. So, so yeah, I still want to do activities.

I kind of enjoy doing them. And one Thing I love is that anytime I do an activity, I can remember very well when I couldn't do it. And now many of them I can do well.

And at this point, a lot of them is what they call adding loading in therapy, where you're doing an activity, but maybe you're standing on a balance board or you're listening to a podcast or you're doing something else that's kind of distracting you.

So it just makes it that much more natural to do your activity so you get that much better at it. So I'm kind of at a place where I just keep adding more loading to make it more challenging to make it more natural.

So there's a lot of that too. But although I graduated, I definitely don't feel like I'm really done, but I don't really need to press so hard anymore, that's for sure.

Denise: Yeah, I think that is amazing. I'm looking in the background at that rotator that you made.

Chris: Yeah, there it is.

Denise: I'm thinking, you told me that you work in mechanical engineering, is that right?

Chris: Yes.

Denise: So it was like a natural thing for you to create those options in your basement that you found at vision therapy that were probably originally very expensive to create and you've created your own little inexpensive, I think, hack of what that was so that you could do that all the time.

Chris: It is, it was kind of my only option because you can't just go buy those things. You have to be a doctor. And of course they're expensive.

And then that's just one of the ways. All the years of being a kid working on bikes and building go karts in my garage just kind of paid off.

So I just needed this thing. There's no way I was going to go buy it or get anywhere. So I just built it. I knew I was going to get a lot of use out of it and I still use it to this day.

So it just kind of worked out, but it was kind of a necessity thing. It's something I needed. And the thing is, you can do. They have all this equipment in the office, but if you only do those things when you're in the office, it's just going to take so much longer to get through all this stuff.

And it's really about how much homework are you willing to do or how much can you do based on what equipment you have. So to me, if I'm doing this stuff at home, it just accelerates all this so much more.

And I kind of wanted to get through it. And, you know, I was up against something really difficult. So I just knew I needed to do everything I could to kind of move things along if I wanted to make progress.

I have ARC, which is anomalous retinal correspondence, which is just something that complicates this so much further.

And I've been told that most people won't even attempt to treat it because the results are so uncertain. It doesn't usually work. Well, if you are going to treat it, you really, really have to work at it.

And that's why I have all this stuff, because it's just so much harder for me to make progress because I'm up against something like that. Whether you might have other patients. I would see patients at WOW all the time that might be there for a few months, and they're gone because they graduated, especially the kids. They would just learn so fast.

And here I am literally there year after year, and I just wanted to move things along. And that's really a matter of doing a lot of work at home.

Denise: Yeah, it's very inspiring to hear that. You know, you actually broke through the barrier.

You know, when they said you have a one in a million chance or whatever the doctor told you, you showed that that was not the case, that you were actually able to do that.

I think it's just inspiring.

Chris: Yeah, but that's not really true. That's a one in a million. And No, I know something people say, but it's more an issue of how hard are you willing to work. It's not a chance. It's not a one in a million chance.

There's two things. You have to find the right people to help you, which for me was vision therapy.

Denise: Right.

Chris: And the other thing is you have to do the work. And if you don't have one of those, it just won't happen. This is just too difficult a thing to change.

You can't do it on your own, and they can't do it for you. So. Yeah, so it's definitely. There's nothing left to chance.

Denise: I just brought that up because that's what the doctors will say.

Chris: That's what they say.

Denise: And that's my job. And your job is to let people know that that is actually not the reality of the issue.

It's a matter of deciding, really, this is what I want and paying the price to reach that goal, whatever that looks like.

Yeah, you paid it in a huge way with the setup that you have in your basement and your, you know, ongoing dedication to applying the principles that you learned about your vision.

Chris: Yeah. And a lot of that is really a result of not just the headaches, but just the dealing with fighting with your eyes all the time. I just wanted to get past that so bad.

And it really kind of shows how, I don't want to say miserable, but how bad it was before to live with it. Because we're talking about our vision and you're dealing with it every waking moment of the day.

It's not like you have a bad shoulder and it only hurts when you move it.

Your eyes, you're dealing with them all the time. So it's. It can be not a fun thing to live with. So I just really wanted to get past that and I finally found people that could help me.

So that's really what it was, is just getting past everything I've kind of been used to.

Denise: Right. You have to be willing to see in a whole new way.

And what does that take? Right. I would even find when you say every waking moment, it makes me think about the fact that there have been a lot of times that I would wake up and my eyes were already tired and I think, hey, what are they doing while I'm sleeping?

You know, there's gotta be some way of relaxing the eyes so that they can get some rest during the time that they're closed and you know, during the night. So that's something that I am even now trying to work on more because my vision is still not what I want it to be.

As far as acuity, you know. Yeah. My eyes work together now, but I want my acuity to be better as well.

Chris: Yeah, that's something I haven't really addressed, acuity. And whether I can improve that or not, I don't really know. But I can see well enough with glasses. My corrected vision is about 20/20, both eyes with glasses.

But that's actually a bigger challenge for me. And I kind of had a hard time explaining this to the people at WOW. And to this day, I don't know if they believe me, but I think they do.

But I'm actually nearsighted in my left eye and farsighted in my right eye. My left eye without glasses, it's about 20/40, 20/50. My right eye is about 20/70 or more without glasses.

So my vision acuity is. I think you call that asymmetrical. They're actually pretty different.

And I can tell big time so what happened with me is when I started using both eyes together, my left eye is the one with the better vision, the better acuity.

So when I introduced the right eye with the lesser acuity into the picture, it would actually make the fused image more blurry.

And I would mostly notice if I'm reading fine print that that was the case. Generally speaking, it wasn't a big deal, but I noticed that right away, and that just made it that much more challenging.

And that was just one more change that my brain did not want because it's, my brain's like, okay, we're making things worse here because of that. But that was just something I noticed and you kind of had to fight through it.

So that just presented another challenge. I read somewhere that if you have strabismus and your eyes have different acuity, your brain's always going to choose the one with better acuity.

And I don't know if that's totally true or not, but it definitely happened with me. My left eye has the better acuity, so yeah, I was introducing my right eye, which kind of made things more challenging, but I just kind of fought through it. It wasn't that bad. It was just something I noticed.

But I remember when I explained it to Dr. Alicia the first time, I just got the deer in the headlights and she's like, what are you...She said, could you explain that again?

And, I probably wasn't explaining it very well, but like, you know, it's very much your reality and you, you can see it and you can't always explain it, but it's just another challenge, right?

Denise: And you're okay as long as you have your glasses on. You've equalized the acuity with that, right?

Chris: Yeah, they're, they're close enough. It's still a little bit noticeable, but it's, it's not really a problem. So. Yeah, and I know it's there, so just kind of ignore it.

Denise: So what was your long term goal in posting your video? I'm wondering what you're going to be doing going forward now.

Chris: I'm not quite sure because the only reason I made that video is to show the people at WOW all the things that I had in my basement, because that's all the things that I learned from them.

And when I worked with Dr. Alicia, those are all the things that she taught me. And of course, as we were going along, we talk about this and I would, you know, either tell her or send a picture of Something I built like that rotator or whatever it was, so that she knew what I was working on at home.

So she knew about it. But I just wanted to make kind of a little tour mostly for them.

Pretty much everyone in that office helped me at one point or another. So I kind of just wanted to show them. So I thought maybe like three people would watch it.

And that's, that's, that's all it was intended, but then it got shared a couple times and then all of a sudden I'm getting questions about it. But that was the original intention and that, that's all I had planned was that. But I kind of like to make some other videos that could be used maybe as activities for other patients.

Maybe a kind of a double video where you can do convergence and combine the videos so it's in stereo. Or maybe some red green activities. I really like music, so anything I do, I would like to set to music, maybe make some kind of artistic thing behind it. I'm not one to make a video where I just kind of talk to people and tell them how things are going.

Even though I'm doing this. I kind of think I would have videos that are activities that maybe I don't even appear in them that might be useful to somebody else or at least entertaining to myself.

But other than that, I really, I had no long term plans. Like I said, I didn't even know there'd be any interest in it.

Denise: Yeah, well, I think it's fabulous that there is interest in it and it can inspire other people to do similar things in their own basement. They may not have the skill to make the rotator like you did, but I think some of the other things can be fairly accessible for people to set up in their space.

And maybe you'll have to do a little tutorial on how to create that rotator or something.

Chris: Yeah, I could do that.

Denise: If people want their own, then here's what you do. Right?

Chris: Right. Yeah.
Denise: That's awesome. So you said you had a story you wanted to maybe share with us.
Chris: Okay. This is. To me, this was so great because at the therapy office there's always kids there and it's so great.

I love seeing the kids because I know they're getting these issues sorted out at a young age and they won't go through all these years like I did, having to fight with it.

So that's so great. When I see them, there's this one day, there was this little boy there, and sometimes they look pretty defeated.

And I know what that's like. So I don't know what the software is. They have one room they call the stereo room, and there's a computer in there. There's a large projector, there's a 3D TV.

And you put on the polarized glasses, and they have all these different activities. They're kind of a 3D fusion thing. There's this one activity. I don't remember the name of the software, but it's a dog's head, and there's two red rings.

It's kind of like a cartoonish dog. It's just the head, but it's really large and it's really simple. And it's intended for people when they're just using two eyes together, when they're just learning to.

So it's a real simple, large image. So you can practice fusion.

And you usually look at it. You do the single double thing where you'll see one dog in two rings, or one ring and two dogs. But like I said, you're doing this when you're first starting. When I first started, anything I would do like that would be instant eye strain. And I'd start gaining a headache within minutes.

And when we worked at this activity, at first I couldn't even do it. I would just strain my eyes. I couldn't see it like you're supposed to. And I eventually got better at it. But I just remember what it was like. It was just so painful to look at this dog activity. But I wanted to get it. So for me, that thing just meant instant headache.

So there's one day I was out in the main room. I was doing my activity. I was throwing beanbags in a bucket or something. And this little boy comes by, and his vision therapist is kind of encouraging him along behind him with her hand on his shoulder.

And they're heading for that room, and he had his head bowed down, and he said in the most defeated voice, I don't like the dog. And I knew exactly what he meant. And I thought, buddy, I don't like the dog either, but you gotta do it. I just felt so bad for him because I kind of knew what he was going through just when he said that.

But that's just part of the struggle. And I'm sure he got through it. But a lot of times you see the kids and it's kind of fun and games, but a lot of times it's just not easy.

And you really feel for them because, you know, it's a struggle, but it's definitely worth it. I know they get through it, and it pays off. But sometimes you see them struggling, and you just know what it feels like.

Denise: I think it's awesome that you are through it and that you're encouraging others.

Chris: Yeah, do that too. For me, vision therapy not only worked, it worked incredibly well. And I remember on my last therapy session, we did another test. They're always giving me these tests, and this one, I call it Star Projection Therapy.

I don't know if that's the real name, but what it is is a piece of paper, and there's two vertical lines of numbers. And you look through this viewer, which kind of separates your fields of vision.

And you have a pencil in each hand, and you start your pencils in diagonal corners, and you draw lines to the center until it looks like your lines touch, which they actually don't physically touch. But you're fusing that image.

Now, that was an activity that at the beginning, I really couldn't even do it right. I just couldn't fuse the image. And it gradually got better and better and better.

And I think every several months, they'd given me this test again. And in my last session, I did this test, and Dr. Alicia looks at it, and she said the results I had on this test are similar to that of a person with just average, normal vision.

She said if I went to another office and I did that test, they would have no idea of my history of strabismus. And to me, that's just absolutely incredible.

That was purely the result of visions therapy. I had surgeries as a child, but that was long ago. But the fact that I. On this test, I went from literally not even able to do it to being able to get a normal result, I mean, that's just an incredible testament to how well it works.

It took a lot of work to get there, But I just thought that was amazing when she said that, and she was so happy when she said it, because to me, my success is also their success.

I didn't figure any of this out on my own. It's because of these techniques that they have, and they know what order to do these techniques in. You have to go in a certain order because you can't do the advanced stuff at the beginning.

But there's a method to it. But it definitely. It definitely worked for me. I can only speak for myself, but it got me to my goals, so I certainly believe in it.

Denise: Yeah, that is amazing. I love that. 
A lot of times people with strabismus don't have the mindset that they need to get the results. And those are the people that go in and they take six months of therapy and they give up and say it doesn't work.

Chris: Right.

Denise: And that's the challenge. I think a lot of times is just getting past that place where you think you're not going to make it happen.

Chris: I think maybe people don't realize how much work it is. I liken it a lot to learning to play an instrument, because learning to use your eyes together is learning this skill.

And I'm sure, you know, you can teach people who thought they wanted to play the piano and they realize how hard it is and they give up. That doesn't mean piano lessons don't work. It means it wasn't worth it. So I think that's more of a parallel than anything, is that people will try things and not realize, wow, this is just too much work.

And they'll say it doesn't work, which maybe for some people is true, but it's more that maybe it wasn't worth the effort. I think so. I don't know. To me, vision therapy is really just learning skills. 

So I don't know. Not everybody wants a huge challenge. And they even told me at WOW, people just want to fix, like, whether it's a quick fix or, you know, people want a surgery or a magic pill or whatever, and everything's solved. And it just, vision therapy doesn't happen that way. It takes a long time and it's not fun and it's expensive.

So I've heard lots of people say they want to play the guitar and then they find out how hard it is and they're like, oh, I guess I don't want to play it. So that's kind of how I think of it.

Denise: So it's really true. Yeah. And that's why people who do play instruments, you know, who have paid the price to learn that skill, maybe are more likely to stick with it.

Someone who hasn't developed a certain discipline for whatever activity it is, you know, whether it's music or sports or anything else. That takes practice and dedication.

Chris: Right. Yeah. Yeah. We have a quick fix society. So they. They want it fast and easy. It's just not like that. People don't want to hear that.

Denise: Right. Well, it can be quick for some people.

Chris: Yeah, some people.

Denise: Often it's not. And so.

Chris: Right.

Denise: That's the message, I think, is that if it's not easy, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen and doesn't mean it's not worth it. Because it absolutely is worth it, right?

Chris: Yeah, it is.

Denise: So do you have any last words of wisdom that you want to share with the listeners today?

Chris: I guess there's a couple things I just wanted to remind people of. One thing I would just say to people is just go for it and work hard at it. I would tell people, if I can do it, anybody can do it.

It's really just a matter of work. And it doesn't matter what the situation is. If you find a good vision therapist and put a lot of work into it, you'll get the results.

And I would want people to keep in mind that you're just up against something that's really hard to change.

I kind of fought with my brain quite a bit with this because when I started using my eyes together and seeing all the depth and all the peripheral vision, especially when I was driving, it would be so overwhelming that I just couldn't even look at it.

And my brain would kind of tell me, let's just keep things the way they are. We don't need all this new stuff because it's way more of a challenge for your brain and it's just really hard.

So you got a lot of things working against you, so it's just not going to be easy.

But one of the poems I really like is Keep Going by Edgar Guest, and the tagline is "rest if you must, but don't you quit."

Because there are a lot of times that I wanted to quit because it was just really hard. There was some sometimes there where my headaches got much worse before they got better and driving got worse before it got better.

And if I would have just stopped, I probably would have been in a bad situation, but I just hadn't gone far enough yet. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it's just that I wasn't done.

So when people feel like that, just remember this is just really hard to do.

And one thing I like to think about, I don't know if other people would resonate with this or not, but I had to fight really hard to gain something that most people are just born with and have literally never even thought about.

And I don't know, that just makes me really proud that I can watch a 3D movie like anybody else, but I had to work really hard to earn it.

And for most of my life, I didn't even have that. I couldn't do it.

So that, to me, that's quite a sense of accomplishment.

But it's just a huge challenge and you just have to keep going and just take a break when it gets to be too much, but just, just never stop.

Denise: Wonderful. I agree completely. And you know, those of us who've powered through can really tell people how it's worth it, right?

Chris: It's worth it.

Denise: Yeah. Yeah, definitely worth all of the effort. And I think that it's going to be inspiring to hear you talk about your journey today and they can go on your video and watch you show all of the setup that you've got in your basement.

That's very, very high tech.

Yeah, that'll be really fun for people to see too. So thank you for sharing all that today and maybe we can do some kind of follow up at some point and when you've got some more videos to share or some other tips for people that can help them in their journey too. So I appreciate that.

Chris: Okay.

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.