Vision Training: A Family Affair Copyright 1997 Esther Kuntz

Dr. Jeffrey Getzell has the author’s permission to print this article in Vision News.

Vision Training: A Family Affair

By Esther Kuntz

            My lifelong vision problems never would have been diagnosed or treated if it hadn’t been for my young children.

            Initially, my husband and I sought Dr. Getzell’s help because both of our children had difficulties with reading and writing, as well as balance and fine and gross motor skills.  I was completely unaware that I too had severe difficulties with visual perception.  At age 40, my eyesight was still better than 20/20, and I had always been very proud that I never needed glasses or contact lenses.  My husband and friends envied my “perfect eyesight.”

            But as Dr. Getzell explains, sight and vision aren’t synonymous.  Sight is how clearly and at what distance one sees objects.  It tells nothing about how well a person’s eyes, brain and body work together to process what is seen.  It is vision, not sight, that influences learning, thinking, posture and balance.

            Nevertheless, I had always excelled academically and earned my living as a professional writer.  I would never have gotten treatment—or indeed even suspected I had a problem—if my children hadn’t become patients first.  But within a year, all three of us were wearing behavioral lenses and doing vision training activities daily.

            One salient trait that we all shared was a tendency to focus in on a small portion of whatever we looked at—what Dr. Getzell called tunneling, or a failure to see the big picture.  Although our eyes could see everything clearly, the amount of information that our brains took in and processes was limited.

            For example, a year ago I was assigned to cover a conference for a newsletter.  I looked at the flyer and picked up the phone to ask for directions and find out where I should park.  The person I spoke with immediately pointed out that all of that information was on the flyer in front of me.  I had looked at the flyer, but I hadn’t seen the whole page.

            The first clue that I shared the same diagnosis with my children came during my son’s initial exam.  To demonstrate the concept of visual perception to us as parents, Dr. Getzell asked my husband and me to each try to knock over a plastic bowling pin with a ball, both with and without special glasses.  Dad accomplished this effortlessly without lenses.  But when he put them on, he fell down.  The opposite happened to me.  Without lenses, I missed the pin by a mile.  With them, I knocked it over.  It was then that I began to wonder whether poor visual perception might be the explanation for my poor athletic ability.  I had taken refuge in academics as a child because I couldn’t play.

            Still I was doubtful.  Certainly, I read and wrote well.  My articles were published in national magazines.  But Dr. Getzell explained that I didn’t read and write as well as I would be able to if I completed vision training.

            I had suffered from eyestrain since I was about 25, which limited the number of hours I could work.  One optometrist had given me some eye exercises, but they made my eyes hurt more, so I had quickly given them up.

            I began vision training for two reasons: one was for my benefit, but the other was to monitor the effectiveness of the treatment personally.  Children are rarely self-aware or forthcoming in telling their parents how vision training is transforming their lives for the better.  About the most they will do is complain about having to spend so much time doing the activities.

            Skeptics of any treatment or educational intervention for children frequently claim that the child would have achieved the results without it.  The child simply developed at a slower than average rate, they argue.  He would have done it anyway.  Or perhaps the credit should go to some other teaching method used at school.  The same arguments could not be made about any changes I experienced because I am an adult, and I wasn’t involved in any other forms of therapy or self-improvement.

            During my eye exam, Dr. Getzell asked me to stand up, close my eyes and tell him which way my body was leaning—forward, backward or to one side.  Then he would try different lenses on me until I felt like I was standing up straight.  With these lenses, I walked more smoothly with longer strides and my shoulders were level for the first time.  This was the prescription for my very first pair of glasses.

            But it seemed like a long wait for that prescription to be filled.  Dr. Getzell had made me more aware of how my vision affected the way I perceived my body.  For many years, my right eye had frequently hurt from strain, but how I noticed that it actually felt lower and further recessed in my head than my left eye.  I felt like a figure in a Picasso painting, even though my reflection in the mirror looked perfectly normal.  Over the next year of therapy, my right eye would feel as though it was gradually shifting positions until it felt symmetrical with the left eye.

            From the moment I first put on my new glasses, my world opened up for me, and two weeks of euphoria followed.  I was immediately more aware of the space around me, and rooms looked larger to me.  Not only was I conscious of the space in front of me, on either side and above me that I could see, but I was also aware of the space behind me.

            Within a few days I began to perceive myself as the center of a circle or an ever-changing map that stretched out indefinitely all around me.  (Later, when I became more aware of the space above me, I felt I was the center of a hemisphere.)  This especially helped me with driving because I could make better sense of what I saw in the rear view mirror.  Before I had been sometimes confused about the orientation of cars in the mirror, and so I didn’t check it as often as I should.

            During those first two weeks, common household tasks become noticeably easier for me.  My movements were more fluid so that I could transition more smoothly from one to the next.  Kitchen work went faster, and I began to think that at last I might be able to keep up.

            You see, I’d always been called slow.  I remember staying in for recess and at lunchtime regularly in the early grades to complete my work.  I was able to do almost everything well except sports, because I compensated for my poor visual perception by doing things slowly.

            Other people sometimes accused me of not carrying my share of the load, because I didn’t work as fast as they did.  I would get angry with them and frustrated with myself.  Actually, I was working very hard, but because of my undiagnosed vision problems, my efforts didn’t show.

            But just as I was thinking that the glasses had miraculously changed my life almost overnight, they stopped working for me.  Housework became slow and difficult again.  I became less aware of my surroundings.  I would need more than the glasses to sustain the kind of changes I had experienced initially, so I began vision training alongside my children.

            I noticed changes almost continually over the entire course of my training.  Some were obvious, others subtle.  But the most dramatic was in depth perception—though I had never known before that my depth perception was poor.

            After I’d been in training for about two months, I looked out the window one morning and said, “What’s that?” The world suddenly looked vastly different to me.  I was seeing it in three dimensions for the first time.  This was something I had previously perceived only in stereo photographs and miniature rooms in museums.  I had no idea that the real world looked that way.  It was much more beautiful than I had ever imagined.  Now every time I step outside, I still marvel at the beauty of the spaces between trees and branches.

            Throughout my therapy, I noted continual improvements in my reading, balance and coordination.  I no longer reread material to grasp the meaning, and my reading speed increased.  Proofreading became quicker, easier and more accurate.  I could check whole words and sentences at a glance, instead of letter by letter, and be certain of their accuracy.  One day while I was paying bills I found myself able to copy account numbers in one or two glances—three or four numerals at a time.  Before I had always copied numbers one or two at a time and checked and double-checked.  I suddenly understood why I had to stay in for recess in first grade.

            The glasses even affected my speech.  Once when I was between prescriptions, I became less articulate.  I hesitated, tripped over my tongue and felt generally less confident in myself.  As soon as I got my new lenses, I spoke well again.

            Dr. Getzell can demonstrate these results readily in his office.  He has asked my daughter and me to read both with and without our new prescriptions.  We always sound more fluent with the proper lenses.  Anyone listening can easily hear the difference.

            The same phenomenon happens with my daughter’s feet.  Without her glasses, she is decidedly pigeon-toed.  But when she wears them, her feet point almost straight ahead when she walks.  Again, it all has to do with vision directing and monitoring the body’s performance.

            My vision training has bestowed numerous benefits, but perhaps the most important is safer driving.  My spotless driving record frankly was due more to luck than to skill.  I was a very cautious, hesitant driver who checked and double checked at intersections and on-ramps, but who also had a very large blind spot and often couldn’t react quickly enough.

            Now that I have completed vision training, I can check over my shoulder once and confidently turn the corner or merge with oncoming traffic, knowing I haven’t failed to see an oncoming vehicle.  I’m no longer terrified of the expressway or afraid to drive my children to their many activities.

            In fact, safe driving is a major reason why I want both of my children to complete vision training.  At least I’ll know that when its time for them to learn to drive, I’ve done all I can to ensure their safety.

            I completed my training last May.  I need my glasses only for close work now.  But in the six months since I finished I have observed further changes.

            Dr. Getzell told me that how we see affects how we think.  If we can see the whole picture, we can understand and organize better and faster, because we can see patterns and relationships instantly.  Vision happens all at once, not sequentially or piece-meal.

            I was doubtful until the day I cleaned my refrigerator.  In the past, this had been a half day job, as I washed a shelf at a time and tried to figure out where to put it while I washed another.  Then once I got the appliance entirely emptied, I fiddled around with how to put it back together again.

            This time was different.  All the shelves and drawers came out in order and went back in reverse order.  Te operation was clear and simple.

            But I hadn’t worked at vision training for a year so I could clean my refrigerator more efficiently.  What about my writing?

            Although being a writer is central to my identity, writing itself had often been a dreaded chore.  I enjoyed having written much more than the act of writing itself.  Often, I had difficulty organizing my thoughts and identifying the main idea.  In short, I didn’t know where to start.  As a deadline approached, my anxiety levels climbed sky high.  What if I couldn’t do it?

            My method for longer articles was to collect my notes and ideas on my computer and then arrange and rearrange them until I found an order that flowed reasonably well.  Then I would flesh out the story.  I think of this method as akin to putting a jigsaw puzzle together piece by piece.

            In fact, to meet deadlines, I had to focus all of my thoughts and energy intensely on the task and give up the rest of my life and a lot of sleep.  Dishes piled up in the sink, family members complained that they had no clean clothes, and I abandoned my exercise program.

            Actually, I have done little professional writing in recent years because I couldn’t balance the needs of my family with the demands of editors.  This article is the first I have attempted since completing vision training.  And it has come together very differently.

            I didn’t have time to read and arrange the copious notes I kept during the training period.  I wrote this entirely from memory.  From the start, I knew the beginning, the ending and every step in between.

            While I had to give up some activities to write this, I didn’t have to drop everything.  During the three days that I worked on it, our family routine remained the same, and I also attended three of my daughter’s performances in a variety show.  And I have enjoyed the time I spent writing.  I look forward to finishing soon and having this Sunday afternoon to share with my family.

            Vision training has given my life a rhythm that has dramatically reduced anxiety and stress.  In training, Dr. Getzell stresses rhythmic breathing and performing all activities to the beat of a metronome set at 60 beats per minute.  Eventually, my internal body clock was reset to the steady beat.  I used to work slowly, but then rush to catch up in an uncontrolled way.  I thought that I never had enough time to finish and that I was saving time by rushing.  That was why I often made mistakes in sports.  Now I feel that there is time for everything, and everything will get done if I simply work steadily.

            The rhythm has helped my music.  I play both the piano and violin, but my rhythm was never good.  And I had trouble coordinating the fingering o the violin with the bow changes, thus producing a fuzzy sound.  Now I am confident of the rhythm when I play and enjoy playing more than ever.

            Overall, vision training has led me to a healthier life with much less stress.  I went through many changes during the years I was in training.  The most obvious to everyone was that I lost 40 pounds.  Jenny Craig shares some of the credit, but Dr. Getzell motivated me.  He told me that being overweight changed my posture and adversely affected my vision.  Also, vision training was the first significant thing I had done for myself in the 10 years since the birth of my first child.  The therapy got me started taking care of myself again.

            At the same time, my children have become more physically and academically capable, which makes my life easier.  As my 11-year-old son winds up his training, he is able to learn new material much more readily and is doing better in all school subjects this fall than I ever expected him to.

            My daughter has caught up with her second grade class in reading, after six months of vision training.  (Although she got glasses at about the same time as my son and me, she didn’t begin training until later.)  Interestingly, the big jump in her reading ability came over the summer, when no one was teaching her to read, but she was doing vision training.  It is more common for children to lose reading skills over the summer.

            My self-confidence has grown immensely.  Before the training, I was a little hesitant and slow to respond because vision required such effort.  (Or I missed the obvious as with the previously mentioned conference flyer.)  People reacted with impatience and subtle rejection that ate away at my self-esteem daily from childhood.  Now at 42, I feel I am better than ever in all ways.  Even my bowling score is up dramatically from what it was a few weeks ago.  Until this fall I never got more than a few points over 100.

            It’s never too late to begin vision training.  Remarkable changes happen whether the patient is six or sixty. 

            For more information or to schedule an appointment, call Dr. Getzell’s office: 847-866-9850, or go to his website: wwwpathwaystobettervision.com