Double Vision
This date (yesterday) marks the start of my, hopefully, long and successful crutch usage. This was requested by me, prescribed by my G.P, and finally, collected by Claire. The thinking was that it has some of the height that the cane lacked, while keeping the stability that the hiking pole lacked. In other words, I can put lots of weight on it but still maintain a taller posture. I used it yesterday to walk 100m for lunch in Taverna Corfu, and early reports are not good. I seem to recall early attempts with the crutch being fraught with terror even though, intuitively, it should work.
I tried to get a head start on this article but most of it was unusable, although I was able to save the above paragraph with some shrewd, negative editing. Instead, as the title suggests, I'm going to give a week-late, 18-month update on my double vision. One of the things I took with me from Reha Hamburg was some advice Dr Ottes gave to me. Basically, she recommended that I dispense with the eye-patch when I didn't absolutely need it. You will remember that I had attempted this before, in Bad Segeberg, before my then neurologist advised that it wouldn't make any difference. Time passed and there was little, if any, improvement and I always wondered how the brain would resolve this, it seemed intuitive that, like most things related to neuro-rehabilitation, input would be required. So, I decided to go with Dr Ottes' advice and my own intuition, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the results.
Take a look at that picture. That will be the last you'll see of the crutch, but look to the left. I have been using that light switch and socket as a visual aid. You see, I don't know exactly how the brain merges the two pictures but I've been successfully training the merging as follows: 1) I start off by staring at the light switch, waiting for both images, left and right eye, to become one, that's almost instant at this stage. Then, 2) as soon as the light switch is merged, I jump down to the more challenging socket. If you can imagine another socket image appearing above those pages to the left. 3) I then time how long the full merge takes. 4) Repeat steps 1-3 until bored. When I started this, "step 3" was ten seconds, now it's three. I'd like to thank Dr Ottes for giving me the confidence to continue my experiment. At this rate I, very unscientifically, hope to be finished with the eye patch by August.
This date (today), sadly, marks the end of my crutch usage.
I tried to get a head start on this article but most of it was unusable, although I was able to save the above paragraph with some shrewd, negative editing. Instead, as the title suggests, I'm going to give a week-late, 18-month update on my double vision. One of the things I took with me from Reha Hamburg was some advice Dr Ottes gave to me. Basically, she recommended that I dispense with the eye-patch when I didn't absolutely need it. You will remember that I had attempted this before, in Bad Segeberg, before my then neurologist advised that it wouldn't make any difference. Time passed and there was little, if any, improvement and I always wondered how the brain would resolve this, it seemed intuitive that, like most things related to neuro-rehabilitation, input would be required. So, I decided to go with Dr Ottes' advice and my own intuition, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the results.
Take a look at that picture. That will be the last you'll see of the crutch, but look to the left. I have been using that light switch and socket as a visual aid. You see, I don't know exactly how the brain merges the two pictures but I've been successfully training the merging as follows: 1) I start off by staring at the light switch, waiting for both images, left and right eye, to become one, that's almost instant at this stage. Then, 2) as soon as the light switch is merged, I jump down to the more challenging socket. If you can imagine another socket image appearing above those pages to the left. 3) I then time how long the full merge takes. 4) Repeat steps 1-3 until bored. When I started this, "step 3" was ten seconds, now it's three. I'd like to thank Dr Ottes for giving me the confidence to continue my experiment. At this rate I, very unscientifically, hope to be finished with the eye patch by August.
This date (today), sadly, marks the end of my crutch usage.
.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment