Vision Therapy Update
Eliza has been doing vision therapy for about 8 months now! She started going weekly for an hour each week from January through mid-March. We took about a 3-month break during COVID, then started going every other week for 30 minutes each time.
Just a little background refresher: Eliza was diagnosed with an optic glioma (tumor on the nerve going to her right eye) in September, 2018. She did a year of weekly chemo which shrunk the tumor but left her nearly blind in her right eye. She does have some vision in that eye, however, and with vision therapy we hoped to maintain/strengthen the vision in that eye and help her with balance and coordination.
I am 100% convinced that vision therapy has helped Eliza. We saw immediate improvements in her balance, ability to color inside lines, and significant improvement in being comfortable with wearing a patch. She doesn’t have enough functional vision to be able to be patched for 3-4 hours a day because she can’t see more than a few inches in front of her, but she is able to do vision therapy exercises for 15-20 minutes each day. We’ve also noticed that doing these exercises helps keep her right eye tracking with her left eye rather than turning in towards her nose and going cross-eyed.
Vision therapy is SO fascinating! Her vision therapist was amazing, and spent a lot of time teaching both me and Eliza different red/green activities (where her left eye can see only one color and her right eye can only see one color) to force both eyes to work together. She also did balance activities, peripheral vision activities, and patched activities.
I am so much more confident in what Eliza specifically can and cannot see with her right eye because of vision therapy. Her routine 3-month eye exams at the ophthalmologist are so quick, and usually happen when Eliza is already exhausted from the drive to Seattle and multiple other appointments. Last time her eye exam was an hour after waking up from anesthesia for her MRI…you can bet that eye exam wasn’t accurate! Her ophthalmologist isn’t really supportive of vision therapy, but I’m going with my mama gut on this one and pursuing this alternative therapy to give Eliza the maximum use of her vision that she can get!
Eliza has started getting a little bit sneaky with her red/green activities by scrunching her nose up so she can see with her left eye for a millisecond to complete the activities faster. Her vision therapist said this is REALLY common with kids doing vision therapy her age. We want to keep vision therapy as light and fun, and not something she dreads SO…
We’re taking a 4-6 month break from going to vision therapy sessions (as recommended by her vision therapist) to focus on just doing patched activities at home to try to continue to strengthen/maintain her right eye. We will continue to do 15-20 minutes every day at home!
Vision therapy is pretty expensive ($90-120 per session, not covered by insurance because it is an “alternative medicine”) and her vision therapist knows we have plenty of patched activities we can do at home (pretty much any preschool-type sorting or matching games). We will go back in a few months to see if Eliza is ready to do red-green activities again! Eliza’s vision therapist said it is very common to do a few months on/a few months off as she grows up.
We have been so happy with doing vision therapy and I’ve heard from many other moms that it helped their kids with various vision-related issues too!
I’m so happy to answer any questions about vision therapy to the best of my ability!
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