Need Advice: Horrid Eye Strain
 

I am doing traditional vision therapy and have my second appointment tomorrow. At this point, I haven't even been able to do all of the exercises they gave me on a daily basis. The last couple days I've managed to do two out of three exercises, but today I only did one. I talked to them and they said if it was affecting me so much, it was okay to scale back, but I'm just wondering if I need to get to some reasonable baseline before I continue therapy.

I wake up and my eyes just hurt. As the day goes on it gets worse and worse. I haven't been using the computer, but I haven't been able to keep away from my iphone. I'd consider giving it to my husband and telling him to hide it from me, but that's not very practical, as it is the only phone I have. I do use voice recognition on my iPhone to write these messages, so that's something but I'm still spending too much time on this phone. I would guess about two hours over the course the day, possibly more on a bad day like today. I did have a 10-day period when I barely used my phone--just 20-30 minutes a day max--and it helped but not much, which is why I kind of threw in the towel on that experiment.

What's the best way for me to get better? Is this therapy going to work if I'm feeling this AWFUL all the time?

I think that the pace of vision therapy is only productive if you can function afterwards.

If it hurts too much (yes, it really does as you build new neuropathways and flex muscles; I get migraines lasting for 2-3 days) perhaps going into the clinic once every 2 weeks and doing the exercises at home as you can.

I went every week for 4 weeks, then staggered it every two weeks. Now I do two weeks on and two weeks off.

Overtime, the pain will decrease, but you get to set the pace in terms of how much.

On a different note, I had my first visual hallucination: a crab in the middle of the street. It was actually a leaf blowing, but for several seconds my brain was having fun!

My doctor told me to stop if I feel too strained or to do lower repetitions.

My problem
 

I guess my problem is my eyes feel horrible all the time, and then if I add iPhone usage or really any type of reading onto that, it's even worse. (If i get on the computer for more than 5 minutes, I'm just asking for a world of hurt.) Add any eye exercises, and the only thing I can do is sit in the dark bored out of my mind or suffer through even greater and greater pain with any activity that I do.

I understand! Somedays I do skip the eye exercises because I really want to scan this board or read emails. I feel guilty at times, but it's the best I can do.

I try to push myself when I can because I was told that one should work as much to our threshold to forge new neural pathways and exercise the nerves/muscle groups.

This doesn't minimize the pain, fatigue and shear exhaustion of these seemingly simple exercises.

Just do your best- you can't just be all work (exercises) and no play (iphone etc). I keep thinking of the marathon vs. the sprint analogy.

:)

Update
 

I went to my Vision therapist today, and she's going to have me start going there twice a week for 45 minutes instead of once a week for an hour, and then she said for me not to do exercises outside of our sessions. I'll do this for a week or two and see if I can build up to doing the daily exercises. Then I'll cut back to once a week with her.

I did show improvement from last week, so I guess the therapy is working, even if it's also making me feel bad. I felt fine today until about 5 o'clock, and then a headache crept up on me and now I'm just beat!

It sounds like you are getting spasms in your eye muscles. Try applying heat to your eyes and neck to relax the muscles. You may also want to consider asking your doctor to prescribe a muscle relaxer. Neck and shoulder massages may also help.

I did vision therapy for 6 months and hit all my numbers on converging, diverging, tracking, etc., but I still get terrible eye strain. I have gotten better results from Flexeril (10 mg), massages, and heating my eyes and neck.

A good way to make a heat pack is to fill a sock with dry rice and microwave it. You can use it over and over again and it stays warm for quite awhile, unlike a hot washcloth.

Thanks for the info!
 

That makes sense! I do feel like my eye muscles are twitching at times. I already have flexerill, but I can't take it during the day. It makes me too drowsy. I'll take one tonight and see if I wake up feeling any better. I'll also talk to the doctor about it on Tuesday.