The cross-country drive from New York to Lake Tahoe was going to be a lot of fun last winter, with the cancellation of salads at McDonald's. When the lanes on I-80 seemed to be bouncing around before my eyes, we entered unexpected territory.
My wife asked if you were practicing your slalom turns at 80 miles an hour.
Road conditions were normal. The S.U.V. had new tires. The lanes seemed to blur together. In some cases, the merging of lanes occurred late in the day. Sometimes in the sun and sometimes in fog. The lanes became separate if I closed one eye.
What was happening? I'd seen my eye doctor within a year and had my prescription current.
I went to an eye doctor before unpacking my skis. She advised an M.R.I. to rule out a brain bleed or a tumor after she said my eyes were fine. It did a few days later.
She told me that I should see a neuro-ophthalmologist. Only 600 of them are nationally, and only 250 of them are full-time clinicians. In six states, there is no practicing.
It could take months to get an appointment with one of the few practitioners in the area. My brother helped me get an appointment at a different hospital four hours away, in Palo Alto, Ca. During the 90-minute exam, Dr. Heather Moss took a number of measures to make sure my eyes were centered correctly.
My diagnosis is esotropia, which means inward turning of either or both eyes.
The bouncing stopped when Dr. Moss positioned a bar of triangular plastic in front of both eyes. The piece of plastic had a set of prisms that were different in strength from top to bottom. We got it right, so she alternated the prisms.
Wayward eyes can either turn outward or downward. Double vision is the main symptom of all forms of strabismus, and it's the reason why the brains of adults are used to receiving two slightly different images. Without those, you wouldn't be able to see in 3-D. Someone with strabismus gets two images. The brain doesn't compensate for the misalignment of the eyes, so they are out of whack.
The brain suppresses images from the weak eye, which is why it is most often diagnosed in children. Some children wear an eye patch to retrain their lazy eye. The muscles controlling the weak eye need to be realigned.
The Greek word for "squint" is derived from strabos, which means to close either eye. The brain can overcome the conflicting binocular images from both eyes.
According to the journal, about 4% of adults have it. It's not uncommon for people to live with imperfect vision.
A professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and executive vice president of the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society said the specialized field attracts fewer doctors because it requires an additional year of formal training.
Sometimes surgery is the solution to this problem in adults. They can be ground into a lens and used to trick the brain into interpreting images from both eyes into proper alignment.
It can be difficult to choose the correct degree of correction. The strongest and weakest spires range in strength from 1 to 40 diopters, though they rarely are prescribed beyond 15 because of the distortion they can create.
Dr. Moss told me to try the temporary Fresnel press-on vinyl lens, which uses water to attach to the inside of glasses. Patients can experiment with different strengths. The problem is that they can fall off, and the plastic is not as clear as ground-in prisms. I tried a couple of different types of lens before choosing 3-diopters for the next three months.
My vision was not perfect, but driving was no longer harrowing. When I returned to the East Coast, Dr. Dinkin took over my care. I finally saw double vision in his examining chair.
I saw two A's when I removed the lens from my glasses. When I looked through his hand held mirror, the A's magically merged. I had described bouncing images on I-80 as separate images that my brain was trying to combine. I didn't think it was double vision because the middle lane looked the same as the left lane. I saw two left lanes.
Dr. Dinkin increased my strength to 10 diopters. He divided the light into 5 and 5 directions. The correction was going to be put in a pair of permanent glasses.
There was an issue with the new glasses. The effect of a fun house mirror can be created by the thicker lens along the edges. It is problematic to walk down stairs. I got a new pair of glasses, with a few weaker ones. I try to use those most of the time and reserve the 5- and-5 glasses when I need a vision boost.
I was diagnosed with strabismus in adulthood. I have probably had it all or most of my life, according to Dr. Moss and Dr. Dinkin. Nobody had looked for the problem before and I had not voiced any complaints. My eyes had not moved. The symptoms of this condition came about due to age and fatigue.
It was just one of the perils of getting older. I had my first serious ski fall in 20 years when I hurt my left thumb and right shoulder near the end of our stay. Those get better with ice, rest, a splint and 15 weeks. I began to wonder about my long-term odds. I'm not a horse.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
