Regaining 3D vision with Louis Fontaine

Louis Fontaine relates his success story of regaining 3D vision after years of constant double vision through means of vision therapy and surgery.

Louis Fontaine is a Real Estate Broker-and Owner of Millenia Real Estate, with 29 years of Real Estate, Mortgage, & Title experience specializing in REO, Short Sales & Probate Sales. He has successfully closed over 2000 real estate transactions.

You can contact him on Facebook by searching Louis Fontaine at Millenia Real Estate in Oxnard, California. He is a member of the Looking Ahead – Adult Strabismus Support and Strabismus Support Group.

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 to the Healing Our Sight podcast. I'm your host, Denise Allen, and today I have as my guest Louis Fontaine, who is going to tell us his success story, which I'm really excited about. And let me tell you a little bit about him. He is a real estate broker and owner of Millennia real estate. With 29 years of real estate mortgage and title experience, specializing in REO short sales and probate sales, he has successfully closed over 2,000 real estate transactions. He's represented most major banks, lending institutions, land banks, and outsourcers, including Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, assisting them with their defaulted real estate asset disposition. As a member of the Ventura County Bar association, he works with attorneys and their clients whenever real property is involved and needs to be sold. In his spare time, Lewis volunteers at the Ventura County Legal Aid Clinic. He and his wife, Julie, have two adult sons and two grandsons. He successfully recovered from open heart surgery 18 months ago. He exercises five days a week, swing dances regularly with his wife, and is active in his church. He enjoys playing the blues harmonica and riding motorcycles. And he's extremely grateful to have his eyesight back. Hi, Louis.

Louis: Hi, Denise. I certainly am very happy to have my eyesight back.

Denise: I'm very excited to hear your journey today, so we're going to get right into it. Tell us a little bit about what your vision was like before you started vision therapy, kind of the timeline of what led to you having issues and then finding this kind of solution.

Louis: After we most of us turn 40, we need reading glasses. So that was about as bad as my eyesight was. I needed glasses for reading and computer work, that sort of stuff. And then in 2005, one morning out of nowhere, my left eye turned in all by itself. And it was very good. We don't know what caused it. There's nothing wrong with my vision. Well, I should say my eyes. There's nothing wrong with my eyes. So, they couldn't pinpoint anything and say, well, gee, this is what caused it. And in the beginning, when I acquired double vision, my vision was so bad I couldn't see anything beyond two feet in front of me. Anything beyond two feet was a double. I went to see doctors and optometrists that I was sent to by my personal doctor. And I landed up at UCLA with a neuro ophthalmologist who basically told me the symptom, there's nothing wrong with your eyes. We don't know what caused it. And I asked him, well, now that we know that I have this, what can we do about it and he says, well, there's nothing you can do about it. And this was in 05. He says, I've heard that there's some type of surgery for this, but I don't recommend it. And so, I lived with it for not.

Denise: How did you function with constant double vision for all that time frame?

Louis: Well, we kind of get accustomed to it when from what I've heard recently, is that your brain kind of zones out the eye that's having a problem. So, my right eye is my dominant eye. While driving and while doing other activities that require syndrome, my eye would, I guess without me knowing that written would just stop working. And so that's how I got around. And constant headaches naturally because my eyes were always trying to converge. And just the inconvenience of having double vision limited me to activities that I was doing. I realized that my left eye had stopped working properly was when I went to get pair of reading glasses. And what led me there was a doctor in Los Angeles that specialized in vision therapy. I made an appointment with her. I went in and she prescribed glasses not just for reading, but also for far vision. And when I put those on, it intensified my double vision because my both eyes are working at 11. It was very difficult in the beginning. I couldn't even drive with the glasses because my right eye can see very well, my left eye can see very well. But they're both giving you different meanings. Was like, I don't want to wear these things.

Denise: Okay. So, the doctor didn't do anything to like with a prism or anything like that to help your eyes work together.

Louis: No. It was a disappointing event with her because we were going to start vision therapy. She had told me more or less what she did. And when I went for my second, well, actually it was going to be my first appointment. She wasn't well. Gee, somebody sort of told me, well, she goes, you're going to be there today. I said, well, you don't know. You're going to have to talk to her. So, I said, okay. So, then she called me the next day and said, gee, I'm sorry, but I can't take you on as a patient. This important patients. So that was disappointing. And it's extremely difficult here, you would imagine in Southern California where there would be more doctors doing vision therapy, but it's very difficult to find. So, when I went to dispense the new prescription, the new glasses, this one young girl that was there told me I was telling her that I had double vision. And she said, I used to Work for a doctor in Thousand Oaks, California, that get that kind of stuff. So, she gave me this day the number and then I got a hold of him and that's what got me started on my vision therapy.

Denise: And what year was that?

Louis: 2021.

Denise: All right, so in March of 2021, you found vision therapy. So, at this point you had had double vision for 16 years. Wow, that is a long time. Yeah. And you hadn't. You didn't know before that that there was such a thing as vision therapy? I'm taking it.

Louis: No, because again, the neuro ophthalmologist had told me that there was nothing you can do. I just didn't even search it out. But now with the Internet now, and there's more availability for information for us, so I started doing some searches and I. It's difficult to find. I didn't know about the groups on Facebook at the time. And so, like I said, I found this doctor. It's just by chance, if I hadn't mentioned anything to the girl that was dispensing a new prescription on my glasses, I would have never known.

Denise: Yeah, it's hard to find something that you don't know to look for. Right.

Louis: Sure. Where do you start? I found doctors that were out of state that specialized in vision therapy. But they were out of state.

Denise: Right.

Louis: I wanted to find somebody local that I can meet face to face and sit in front of and we can talk. I love doing that stuff face to face.

Denise: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And so, when you started, how. How are you feeling? Were you feeling skeptical or hopeful or what were your thoughts?

Louis: I was. I was feeling very hopeful because this guy was familiar with my problem and he specialized in correcting the problem. This is the guy I've been looking for. This is the guy I've been waiting for. And when I heard my first appointment, because my first contact with him was through email and I sent him some information, told him what my problem was. He emailed me back and he said, let's set up an apartment. And so, I did and told him my story, what was going on. He did a couple of tests. One of them was a Brock string. Do you conceive two strands connecting on a V towards the middle? And so that gave me even more hope. And I thought, okay, let's get started. When do we start?

Denise: So you could actually see the. The two strings at the beginning of your journey?

Louis: He says if you can only see one string, then you may not be able to help you. But if you see two strings crossing then that means that you have vision in both eyes.

Denise: Okay. Which basically you weren't suppressing the vision in your left eye completely at that point because you could see the two strings. How far out could you see them at that point?

Louis: I would say about three feet in front of me. And I was wearing my glasses at the time, so both of my eyes were projecting good vision.

Denise: Okay. Can you describe a little bit of how vision therapy was for you?

Louis: Well, this is what I liked about this doctor is he says, we're going to have nine sessions in my office. Once a week, when we meet, I'm going to introduce a new exercise for you to do. So, I go to his office. He would introduce me to the exercise; make sure I was doing it properly. And that's what took up our time together. He says, now you're going to go home with these props. And he's in therapy at home. And I said, okay, how long do I do it? Do I do it every day? And he says, well, I recommend you do it at least five times a week, at least 15 minutes for every session. And so, I said, okay. So, with that information, I came home, I started my vision therapy, and I was so excited about it and so hopeful that I would do it a minimum of an hour, every day, made it part of my life.

Denise: Right. That's a big commitment. An hour a day. Was that in one session or did you break it up into several sessions?

Louis: I did it in one session. Sometimes I would even do it for two hours, but not that frequently. One hour was pretty much the time that I allowed myself to do it.

Denise: How did you feel after you finished your sessions?

Louis: Well, the first session that I had at home and exercise, I couldn't remember the stereo trainer power exercise number 3, whatever that was. I did it for an hour. And I have an office set up at home, so I did it in my office. And then I was walking downstairs to do something and I noticed that, wow, okay, I can see better, just that one session. That even gave me more hope.

Denise: Yeah.

Louis: But see, I thought about it and this is the way I think. If one session did this, I can imagine by the end of the week it's going to be pretty cool. Unfortunately, it didn't. It didn't work that way. My vision was good that evening and the next morning I went back to where I was before. I said, okay, at least now I know that this vision therapy thing works okay.

Denise: And was there any particular breakthrough moment when you said, oh, now I know I've made it?

Louis: Well, there's two of them. One of them was when I started getting my, my 3D vision back. And I was downstairs in our living room, my wife decorated, really cool in there. One of those things. I can look towards the right and one of the lamps that we have, the power cord that goes connected to the outlets, you put a decorative cloth of some sort. So, I was looking at that and it looked like the cloth was sticking out from the wall, which I hadn't experienced before. It almost looked like an octopus arm of some sort. The coloration, I just kept staring at it. Wow, this is pretty amazing. And that was one of them. Another time, my wife and I were driving to Los Angeles, I was taking her on a date, and all of a sudden my vision was perfect. I could see perfectly. There was no double vision. Even as we passed folk on the free way, I could see the bumps and I could see the lights on cars, the tail lights. It was still during the day and I could see the, the dimensions of the cars that were next to me, one in front of me, which pretty amazing. I'm like, wow, is this it? Does it happen like this? I had read Susan’s book. Not Susan

Denise: Sue Barry.

Louis: Yes.

Denise: Yeah, Susan Barry.

Louis: And she said, well, they have got her on. A friend of her or a friend of hers went to see a 3D movie. And after he came out, his vision was perfect. So, I'm thinking, well, maybe that's what's happening here. It lasted three days and then it went away. So, I mentioned that to my vision therapy doctor and he says, oh, that's unusual. He said, that normally doesn't happen? Well, it happened to me and then it kind of teased me and then it went away. 

Denise: Then you had your goal of what you wanted to attain on a permanent basis at that point, right?

Louis: Yes, I was determined to acquire proper vision.

Denise: Right. Well. And you had had that type of vision before the event in 2005, correct? Yeah. So, it's like, oh, now I can get back to normal once I have the vision therapy process work.

Louis: Right.

Denise: You could see that.

Louis: And I was very hopeful at the time. Yeah, I can, I can see this working for me. But now it gave me a little teasing. So, I said, I want this. I'm going to do everything I can to aquire it.

Denise: Okay, so tell us what the timeline was from that point on. What happened after that?

Louis: Well, I started in March of 2021, and I was committed to doing my work the five days a week, at least 45 minutes to an hour. So, I was dedicated to doing it. And so, I had an appointment with my optometrist, and he didn’t know I was doing vision therapy. And so, he checked my eyes, checked my vision. And this is about a year and a half into vision therapy. And he said, you know, your vision is probably good enough that I can prescribe the minimum amount of prism. So, he gave me one, just one degree of prism on each eye and when I got my new prescription, my new glasses, I put them on and it was like, wow, this is very, very good. And so that made my life a lot easier. It was a game changer for me. And I remember about the same time my wife and I were taking a little trip. We were in Nashville. And so, we decided to rent a car. Driving from Nashville to Memphis, about a 200-mile drive. It was so pleasant because I'm wearing these prism glasses. I could see very well. My vision wasn't perfect, but I could see very well. And it was such an enjoyable trip. I was like, wow, this is what it's supposed to feel like not battling with my vision throughout the whole two hundred miles. Yeah, I could go on and on and on.

Denise: So, at that point you're in prisms, but you are still in vision therapy, trying to get your vision to where you want it without the prism. Is that right? Okay

Louis: Yes, that was my goal. And so, I continued with the vision therapy. The doctor told me wear the prism glasses whenever you're doing things visually. So, because your brain gets. I don't know if accustomed to seeing that way was the way he put it, but he says they'll send signals to your brain that you can see properly. That's how I did that continuously.

Denise: Okay. And then at what point did you decide that you needed to do something in addition to the vision therapy?

Louis: Okay, I had heard about surgery, but I'd never known or met anybody that had surgery whether they were successful or unsuccessful.

Denise: Yeah.

Louis: So, then I started looking, I did some research and I came across and page on Facebook a strabismus surgery and then also the strabismus support groups. I joined both. There was this one hospital, they were in the Midwest somewhere that were doing a lot of surgeries. And I'm thinking, I wish they were here at Southern California. But I'm willing to go out of state. But let me see if I can find somebody in Oakland. And about the same time, I had some health issues. I landed up in the hospital. I needed to get some triple bypass open heart surgery. So, I did that. About a year and a half ago after my surgery, I started looking into surgery, the eye surgery more. And I believe there was someone that I spoke with and she no, I know what I did. I posted on Strabismus support group as anyone in Southern California had surgery and were you happy with the results? And Caryn responded and she said, I've had surgery, but I'm not all that happy about my doctor. So, we spoke on the phone and long conversation with two people with the same issue. Get to talking about a lot of stuff to say.

Denise: Yep. And just to be clear, we're talking about Caryn Rinaldini, right?

Louis: Yes, exactly right.

Denise: Who my listeners have heard from before. So, I just want to make sure I get that clarity.

Louis: Yeah. And I have joined the strabismus group because of Melissa, her website and she said there's support groups and that sort of stuff. So.

Denise: Right.

Louis: Yes. Then I had a conversation with Caryn and I asked her, well, since you're not all that happy about with your doctor, could you recommend somebody? She says, oh, well, I haven't spoken to anybody, but there's this couple that I've been looking for a doctor for their son who has the same problem. Let me speak with them, see if they've come across someone. We spoke about a week later and she said, yes, she gave me a doctor's name. She says, this is the doctor that they are going to proceed with. So, she gave me this doctor's name. She said, I don't know exactly where he's at, but Google him, see if you can come up with something. So, I did. And as I googling him, I came across a doctor in Torrance, California. Torrence, from where I live is about, about 70 miles. And I figured, well, I can do that. And this one particular doctor had excellent credentials, great experience, great reviews. And well, I decided to give him a call and set up an appointment with him. And I did, went to see him and he checked my eyes. Says, your eyes are healthy. There's nothing wrong with your eyes. He says, but the problem is that your left eye, the eye that turns in, the muscle that pulls the eye upward, is weak. He says, it's a difficult situation because we can't do anything about a weak eye. We can't strengthen it if the only thing we can do is to match the strength to your right aye. And I'm thinking, well, gee, wait a minute, that's my good eye. If we mess with that eye, then I'm going to, you know, what am I going to do if it doesn't work out properly? So, he explained everything to me. And I felt very comfortable with his instructions and his explanation. Now bear in mind that this doctor, he teaches other doctors how to do these procedures. So that was another thing I felt comfortable with. And so, I said, okay, let me think about this. I want to talk to my wife about it. I think you need to buy a cane with a red tip. for the rest of my life. I don't. I'm not sure. But I. Again, I was hopeful about it, and I felt comfortable with him. I'm Christian, so I prayed about it. About a week later, after talking to my wife about it, she says, how do you feel about it? I said, I felt pretty comfortable. I think I'm going to proceed with it. So, I did, and I'm glad I did.

Denise: So just to be clear, your vision therapy doctor didn't recommend surgery necessarily. That was something that you sought out on your own, is that right?

Louis: Yes. And when. When I was looking at the surgery, he was. He was good about it. He did say, dodgy, don't do that. That's horrible. You don't want to mess with your eyes. He. And then I. I asked him, I thought, can you recommend somebody? Because, you know, he's in the business, and he talks to other doctors that do this kind of stuff. And he did mention a group not too far from where I live. He says, I send my patients over there. And so, I looked at their website and I talked to somebody over there, and I didn't feel as comfortable as I did with the first doctor, so I decided I would go with him. I also sent my ophthalmologist doctor, Dr. Wright's information. I said, are you familiar with him? And he said, well, I never heard of him, but his credentials look great. He says, I'm sure that you’ll have a good outcome. It's all whatever you decide to do.

Denise: Yeah.

Louis: But he never brought it up before. And the reason I started looking into surgery, it's because I felt I had got as far as I could with the vision therapy. And I'm thinking, well, gee, this may take another four or five, six years. And I don't know if I want to dedicate that much time out of my life. I'll do it if I have to, but if there's a faster way to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish, let me look into that as well.

Denise: Right? Yeah, it totally makes sense. Um, I think that that's an important piece of the picture because we don't often see doctors working together like we would like, you know, And, I mean, I had a situation where my doctor did say, I think you're going to need to consider surgery. But I think that's outside of the norm in this care industry, you know. So, I think it's important that people realize that it's up to you to decide what's better for you. Right.

Louis: Not just with this, but especially with this. But I learned this through my, my open-heart surgery. We have to do our own advocate. We have to research because a lot of doctors are not up to date as to even in the specialists. I’ve spoken with cardiologists who have no clue what's going on. They test, they open up their book to see. Okay, what do the drug companies recommend? Okay, this is. Ok, so that's another issue that I have a problem. We really have to be our own advocate.

Denise: So then when you had the surgery, you told your ophthalmologist that did the surgery that you had done vision therapy as well. Is that true? 

And what was his recommendation about that? Did he say oh you should go back and do more or did he even bring that up?

Louis: No, he isn't a believer of vision therapy.  I told him what it had done for me. And then after my surgery I asked him, should I continue with the vision therapy and he said no, you don’t need to..

Denise: Yeah, that's. That's typical too. Yeah.

Louis: I don't know. I don't know if you can see back here. There's my Brock String..

Denise: Ah, nice. Got a nice long one there. So how long did it take you after the surgery to go back to vision therapy?

Louis: Okay. Actually, I just started again last week. I started with the Brock string. I felt some strain on my left eye, which is the non-surgery eye. And so, I said why don't you let me try some Brock string and see if it relieves a little bit. I really should be doing eye exercises anyway. And I, I don't. I'm just so happy to have my vision back there.

Denise: How long ago was the surgery?

Louis: I had surgery done the week before Thanksgiving, November 20th. So, it's been, let's see, fourth month. It's been about almost four months.

Denise: Okay, so you're going back to your vision therapy doctor now then or you're doing your own therapy?

Louis: No, I am not. I talked to him, but I called his office to set up an appointment to get an eye exam. My ophthalmologist that did the surgery, he says go see your optometrist about your prescription because your eyes have changed a little bit. And you know, just let him know what's going on. So, when I called, they told me that Dr. Evangel had retired. Now the other doctor, he doesn't do vision therapy, but I didn't need to do vision therapy with him. Yeah, I have my outline on what I need to do as far as vision therapy. So, I don't need to really go see a vision therapy doctor. So, I went to see them to get a new prescription and he remembered me, gave me a new prescription on. So I haven't gotten it filled yet because these, these glasses here, my other glasses are already. These have a yellow tint to it. The other ones are clear, unassisted. Those two clear. What you're using right now are very close to your prescription. So, I just have a note of the priority to go get my prescription filled.

Denise: Okay, so what did you notice as far as your vision function after your surgery as opposed to how the progress that you had made just with vision therapy alone?

Louis: Well, I had a post-op appointment with the doctor the next day, so he just wanted to make sure that I didn't have any. . . He just wanted to see how I was doing. So we drove my wife and I drove. Well she drove. And he checked my eyes as your eye looks good, we'll just have to wait for it to heal. His suture was still in there. And I told him, I said, doc, you know, my vision looks. I still see double, but like the opposite. And he says, well, what I did, I overcorrected it. With surgery, it's not like with eye examination where they, you know, you see better here. Can you see better here?

Denise: Right.

Louis: There's no measuring stick. I mean, they do it by centimeter. Well, if I do this to the muscle, maybe 3 cm or 5 cm. Whatever measure device they use, he says based on the degree of the problem, this should get really close. So, it's not a perfect science. He said, what happened? I over corrected it a little bit. He said, normally we wait seven days to take the sutures out. When your eye has healed pretty well, there's no turning back after that. I want you to do this. I want you to come back the day before and then we'll see what's going on. He said, check the suture and see what happens. So, he said, okay, let's do that. So, he removed to suture. He went in there and snip, snip. And lo and behold, my vision was perfect. I mean, I'm talking about perfect.

Denise: Wow.

Louis: Like, don't move, don't do anything. Nobody move. I'm not going to move. I'm going to stay here forever. And said, well, you can't. I'm like, okay, So I said, will it stay this way. He said, well, your eyes still healing, it may, it may not. And so, I said, well, thanks for the information. So, I left that day seeing perfect. And then I could feel my eye as it was healing more. tightening more. Yeah, my vision kind of started going double, which is a little disappointing, but I was hopeful. And so, every morning I couldn't wait to get up and see. Well, and it got worse, but then it started getting better again. And so, a week and a half goes by and my vision is almost perfect. When I say almost perfect, if I were to take my glasses off or with my glasses on so I can see farther, I can look out my window. And everything that I see is single, but there's a little blurriness the further out that I go, which I can live with it. That's not a problem. Yeah, I mean, by almost perfect vision, I can drive properly. That in life, it was a challenge to drive because of the lights.

Denise: Yes.

Louis: And I don't have that problem anymore. I ride motorcycles. It's so pleasant now to do those types of activities. As before, it was a struggle. It was challenging. Now it's fun to ride.

Denise: That is awesome.

Louis: So that's where I'm at now. 

Denise: Okay. 

Louis: I started feeling some tightness the other day. So I started doing the Brock string. Today, I woke up this morning pretty, pretty good. And my eyes, for about a year, maybe a year and a half, started feeling kind of dry. And I mentioned that to the ophthalmologist, Dr. Reich, that did the surgery. And he says, I want you to go see plastic something, something surgeon. If they deal with eyes. I want the doctor to check your eyes just to make sure there's no cancer or anything like that. He says your eyelid on your right eye seems to be pulling out a bit. And so, I did go and had my eyes checked with this really nice doctor, he said there was nothing wrong. I said, well, how come my eyes get irritated by the end of day? He says, well, you know, your eyes are getting dry. That's alI. So, he recommended some over the counter drops, I forgot what they’re called. But I started using those about a week and a half ago. It does sooth my eyes and makes them feel better. Okay, I told you I could go on and on.

Denise: Nope, that's okay. It's all good. So, I was a little surprised at the trajectory, you know, because it's so different for everyone. You know, there will be people who, like Caryn, had the surgery and then had to do the vision therapy. Melissa and I both did vision therapy prior to our surgery. The surgery was recommended by our doctors and then we had vision therapy after the surgery, you know, so we had that kind of sweet spot where the doctors kind of worked together a little bit more, you know, not perfectly working together, but at least acknowledging each other, you know. And in your case, there was 

Louis: They want to stick with their specialty.

Denise: Right. And in your case, it was opposite where you did the vision therapy and then the surgery and then you didn't go back to the vision therapy. So.

Louis: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I haven't gone back with the. I haven't since. Since my eyesight is good.  I felt I didn't need to do vision therapy again or anymore. But I think I am going to at least have maybe two sessions a week or something. My eyes, since I've been doing it a few times, my eye, my left eye, which is a non-surgery eye, feels much more relaxed. A lot of times it's just a matter of looking this way, looking that way, looking up, looking down, just exercising art our eye muscles, which we said do anything.

Denise: Right. Well, I think that's what people don't really understand, or practice is just good eye hygiene. You know, it's that, that the natural vision improvement techniques that, that are taught by those kinds of facilitators, you know, that, that or into natural vision improvement where we're talking about blinking more so that we don't have dry eyes and doing the stretches so that, you know, our eyes are mobile and doing the relaxation techniques so that they're relaxed, you know, and it all plays into how our eyes are functioning all the time. Right.

Louis: Yeah. This doctor also had me do something else. He says, with all the, the gunk that's in the air on a daily basis. We live in Ventura County. I don't know if you're familiar with Ventura, California. We're between Santa Barbara and Malibu and we're close to the coast, but we're. There's a lot of farm area here and there's a lot of pesticides.

Denise: Yeah.

Louis: The news. And so he says, get into a habit of washing your eyes. He says use baby shampoo. Wash your eyes every morning or every evening or, you know, just, just better eye hygiene.

Denise: Yeah.

Louis: And so, I've been doing that as well.

Denise: Oh, good. So, what would be your advice for people who are wanting to do something to improve their situation with their vision?

Louis: Don't give up. Be determined. It's your eyesight. Be your own advocate. As I said earlier today, if you speak with one doctor and you don't feel comfortable with them, go see another doctor until you find somebody that you feel comfortable with. And if for. For anybody in Southern California, I highly recommend Dr. Wright. He's the one that did my surgery. May not be a good fit for them, but you never know.  Get an appointment to go see them. and vision therapy. You know, get dedicated on doing your vision therapy. Make the time to do it. In the beginning, I was very excited about it, and I remained excited about this throughout the whole time and hopeful at the same time, because now at least I knew there was something that could be done about my problem. I just pursued it and pursued it, and here I am talking to you now.

Denise: Yeah. Awesome. And you're also on the support groups encouraging other people on there, I've noticed.

Louis: Absolutely, yes. And if anybody wants to talk to me personally, just, you know, contact me through the page on Facebook and we can have a phone conversation, if you want to do that. I'm more than happy to share anything that I've experienced myself with you and see if I can help you out.

Denise: Okay. And just to be clear, which Facebook group are you usually on?

Louis: Are you talking about what strabismus group?

Denise: Yeah. If they're trying to contact you, do they just go. Go to Facebook with your name?

Louis: Yeah. You can search me up. Louis Fontaine in Ventura. Millennial Real Estate. M I L L E N I AL. I'm on the strabismus support group, and I believe I'm also in the. Let me see if I could check it real quick.

Denise: Right now, you're on the looking ahead one with Caryn also.

Louis: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Denise: Okay.

Louis: And contact me through there. And said, I'd be more than willing to have a phone conversation with you as well. Anything I can do to assist anybody because I know how frustrating it is to have this problem. Nobody really understands what we're going through. People look at you, say, well, yeah, your eye goes inward a little bit, but they don't see what we see.

Denise: Exactly. 

Louis: You know, when I started doing vision therapy, and my eyesight was better when I was looking down because it was closer. So, I had a tendency to look down all the time because that was my comfort zone, my vision of comfort zone. And it was difficult to look up, and so I got used to looking down, and I had to retrain myself to look up and look at people's faces and look at their eyes and have a conversation with them. So, it takes dedication, it takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen. It will happen.

Denise: Awesome. Well, that is very hopeful information and thank you for sharing your journey with us today. Yeah, it's. It's been great. And I will put your information in the show notes, too, for how people can contact you..

Louis: From the beginning to the end. I would say it was challenging; it was exciting, it was educational for many reasons. I only had one surgery. The effort was very pleasant, very good for me. I've seen people post on these pages where they're on their third surgery when they're still not where they're supposed to be. I feel bad for anyone that has to go through having surgeries, but what else could we do? My first surgery was a very good outcome, and I'm happy with the outcome.

Denise: Yeah.

Louis: If I would have had one surgery and I didn't get the outcome that I was looking for, I would be willing to do a second surgery and third surgery if I were to just to get as close to having single vision as possible.

Denise: So, I guess my question when you say that is, do you feel like it's the surgery that gave you the outcome, or do you think it was the combination? Because I feel like a lot of people are doing only surgery. They're not doing any functional work with their, you know, vision therapy doctor involved. And so, is it really reasonable to say, oh, if surgery didn't work the first time, I'm going to do it again and I'm going to do it again?

Louis: Yeah, maybe that was not the correct thing to say. I believe it was a combination of the vision therapy and the surgery.

Denise: Well, everyone's story is different, you know, and I personally didn't have any surgery as a child, and I thought I was just going to do the vision therapy, and everything would be good, but I couldn't bring my eye out to where it needed to be. And so, I had the surgery and then I had more vision therapy.

Louis: And you're good now.

Denise: Yeah, Now I see in 3D.

Louis: Yeah. Now, another thing I want to say, I'm 72 years of age, so don't let age become a problem for you, but at this state of my life. I want to live a good life. So, I decided to do everything.

Denise: So, the other takeaway here is it's never too late. Awesome. I think that's a good note to end on.

Louis: Very good. Thank you again for the opportunity to give my story.

Denise: Yes. Thank you. 

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