The Journey To Regaining Freedom

Imagine years of doctors appointments, thousands of dollars in what felt like endless amounts of testing, only to be told “everything is fine”. Yet, simple, routine daily tasks were becoming impossible and left you with debilitating symptoms. You struggle to read, you’re getting headaches, blurry vision and watery eyes, you can’t safely drive a car over 40mph, requiring you to stick to backroads everywhere you went. This was the unfortunate situation that our patient had been experiencing. 

It was about 20 years ago that she started experiencing symptoms that were impacting her daily life. Reading is one of her favorite activities which became almost unbearable. She spent short periods of time reading before she had to quit because of the debilitating symptoms like blurry, watery eyes and pounding headaches. 

Stores were becoming increasingly stressful and the ability to simply grocery shop was impossible. The stores were simply too visually busy and overstimulating! They created sensations of visual instability, as if she was walking on a moving boat.

In the beginning, simply driving on sunny days was intolerable, the sun beaming through the trees, creating a strobe-like effect that triggered intense motion sickness. This quickly translated to her husband needing to drive her most places, which didn’t cure the motion sickness, but was a safer option than her driving. Unfortunately, visiting family and friends a couple hours away in Chicago was no longer an option and as her world continued to shrink, she missed valuable time with loved ones and her world became smaller and smaller.

Identifying and Fixing the Problem

While at a standard eye exam for her son at her local optometry office, she just so happened to ask the doctor if they treated binocular vision dysfunction. Although they didn’t, she was pointed in the direction of EagleEye Performance Vision. She went through the evaluation process with Dr. Neil, which provided significant insight into her visual dysfunctions and finally gave a name, convergence insufficiency and visual motion sensitivity, and a solution to her frustration. 

Freedom has returned! 

After 12 weeks of vision therapy, she’s regained her freedom. The simple things we often take for granted have been reintroduced as daily activities for her. The opportunity to read for as long as she wanted without any issues, restored balance, and the simple ability to grocery shop. But, most importantly, the freedom to visit family and friends hours away, while driving 70mph on a highway.