Eyes
I'm going to take a break from my regularly scheduled discussion on Web Development to talk about something that has affected me and my kids. Convergence Insufficiency.
In a nutshell, Convergence Insufficiency is a curable condition that is caused by weak eye muscles.
Here's where you can find more information about it.
http://www.convergenceinsufficiency.org/
Why is it such a big deal? Well, it can cause problems with reading comprehension in kids. It can also cause issues with adults. My symptoms included spontaneously falling asleep...ok maybe not spontaneously, but within minutes of reading something, I would be out. It was incredibly frustrating. I went to all kinds of doctors to see why I kept falling asleep. No one was able to give me answers or seemed like they wanted to. A friend of mine was talking about her son's eyes when she asked me if I thought maybe my eyes were the problem and not the rest of my body. I started doing research on it....how could my eyes cause me to fall asleep. I stumbled upon convergence insufficiency sites. A few months before, I had a parent teacher conference with one of my daughter's teachers and the reading specialist. They said that my daughter couldn't recall anything that she was asked to read. They even showed me the passage that she was asked to read. She couldn't even recall the first sentence. I later found out that my other daughter was getting headaches when she was reading. She has acquired a severe hate for reading because of it. Suddenly everything started to make sense. I decided to bring them to an eye specialist and had them and myself checked. Sure enough, we all had varying degrees of convergence insufficiency. We all went through therapy, got special glasses to help ease the eye muscle strain. It took a while but we are all doing better now. I can read books without falling asleep, no more headaches for my daughter and my other daughter has gotten better with reading comprehension.
I'm not sure why my kids got convergence insufficiency, but I think I know why I did. Ever since about 15 or 16, I was wearing contacts 20+ hours a day, 7 days a week. I never took a break from them. While that wasn't the direct cause, I suspect it was a contributing factor. Another factor was that I was wearing distance contacts for everything. Even when I would read. This caused my eyes to rely on the correction that it didn't actually need in order to see. My eyes didn't have to work as hard as they should have in order to read, thus weakening the muscles around my eyes.
I remember a funny situation...I was at a bar with a friend, who was sitting across the table from me. I decided to be silly and cross my eyes. She started freaking out, and I didn't understand why until she explained to me that 1 eye remained crossed while the other drifted back. That is not normal.
Getting my bachelors degree, while being a single mom and working full time was hard. It was even harder to do school when reading a few lines would cause me to fall asleep. I found ways to cope with it, sometimes by going back and forth between reading and other tasks to give my eyes a break, other times I would walk on a treadmill to stay awake so that I could read. Thankfully, all of my textbooks were digital, which meant that I could use a tablet and increase the font to actually be able to read it clearly while walking.
So, now that I'm done with treatment, I look back and realize that this all could have been prevented....if only eye doctors would check for convergence insufficiency when they did routine eye exams. One of my daughters complained about headaches during her kindergarten eye exam....the doctor blew it off as nothing. My last routine eye exam, I failed the peripheral vision test 5 times. They even had the machine tested. The peripheral vision test, uses a square that moves around your field of vision and you have to choose left, right, up or down, while you stare at another square that is centered in the middle of the screen. They told me that I had to keep my eye still and just use my peripheral vision to find the other square. I thought that I was. It was only after I discovered that I had convergence insufficiency that I realized why I had failed that test.
So, moral of the story is....if you are struggling with comprehending something (especially programming) where you feel like you read something, then have to re-read it because you didn't understand it and even the simplest things seem hard, get your eyes checked...and not just by a regular doctor that isn't trained on how to detect convergence insufficiency, but rather by a specialist that is properly trained in detecting and treating convergence insufficiency. It can make a huge difference in your life.
In a nutshell, Convergence Insufficiency is a curable condition that is caused by weak eye muscles.
Here's where you can find more information about it.
http://www.convergenceinsufficiency.org/
Why is it such a big deal? Well, it can cause problems with reading comprehension in kids. It can also cause issues with adults. My symptoms included spontaneously falling asleep...ok maybe not spontaneously, but within minutes of reading something, I would be out. It was incredibly frustrating. I went to all kinds of doctors to see why I kept falling asleep. No one was able to give me answers or seemed like they wanted to. A friend of mine was talking about her son's eyes when she asked me if I thought maybe my eyes were the problem and not the rest of my body. I started doing research on it....how could my eyes cause me to fall asleep. I stumbled upon convergence insufficiency sites. A few months before, I had a parent teacher conference with one of my daughter's teachers and the reading specialist. They said that my daughter couldn't recall anything that she was asked to read. They even showed me the passage that she was asked to read. She couldn't even recall the first sentence. I later found out that my other daughter was getting headaches when she was reading. She has acquired a severe hate for reading because of it. Suddenly everything started to make sense. I decided to bring them to an eye specialist and had them and myself checked. Sure enough, we all had varying degrees of convergence insufficiency. We all went through therapy, got special glasses to help ease the eye muscle strain. It took a while but we are all doing better now. I can read books without falling asleep, no more headaches for my daughter and my other daughter has gotten better with reading comprehension.
I'm not sure why my kids got convergence insufficiency, but I think I know why I did. Ever since about 15 or 16, I was wearing contacts 20+ hours a day, 7 days a week. I never took a break from them. While that wasn't the direct cause, I suspect it was a contributing factor. Another factor was that I was wearing distance contacts for everything. Even when I would read. This caused my eyes to rely on the correction that it didn't actually need in order to see. My eyes didn't have to work as hard as they should have in order to read, thus weakening the muscles around my eyes.
I remember a funny situation...I was at a bar with a friend, who was sitting across the table from me. I decided to be silly and cross my eyes. She started freaking out, and I didn't understand why until she explained to me that 1 eye remained crossed while the other drifted back. That is not normal.
Getting my bachelors degree, while being a single mom and working full time was hard. It was even harder to do school when reading a few lines would cause me to fall asleep. I found ways to cope with it, sometimes by going back and forth between reading and other tasks to give my eyes a break, other times I would walk on a treadmill to stay awake so that I could read. Thankfully, all of my textbooks were digital, which meant that I could use a tablet and increase the font to actually be able to read it clearly while walking.
So, now that I'm done with treatment, I look back and realize that this all could have been prevented....if only eye doctors would check for convergence insufficiency when they did routine eye exams. One of my daughters complained about headaches during her kindergarten eye exam....the doctor blew it off as nothing. My last routine eye exam, I failed the peripheral vision test 5 times. They even had the machine tested. The peripheral vision test, uses a square that moves around your field of vision and you have to choose left, right, up or down, while you stare at another square that is centered in the middle of the screen. They told me that I had to keep my eye still and just use my peripheral vision to find the other square. I thought that I was. It was only after I discovered that I had convergence insufficiency that I realized why I had failed that test.
So, moral of the story is....if you are struggling with comprehending something (especially programming) where you feel like you read something, then have to re-read it because you didn't understand it and even the simplest things seem hard, get your eyes checked...and not just by a regular doctor that isn't trained on how to detect convergence insufficiency, but rather by a specialist that is properly trained in detecting and treating convergence insufficiency. It can make a huge difference in your life.
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