ensete

Do you patch both eyes alternatively or only one ? If one, is it the stronger or weaker ?

Do you always use the pc while patching or can you use it without ?

a month later

bkdo It's been over a year, did you do vision therapy? I read that you started to wear prisms in that time and they improved symptoms for you. However I think that for CI vision therapy is the first thing that one should be doing, and only if that fails, then consider prisms. Or prisms + vt simultaneously. Because in CI they don't cure the cause, just relieve the symptoms? It's different with divergence insufficiency I think.

  • bkdo replied to this.

    @mike I'm also having symptom relief when using patching. I've tried patching once already, about month ago, but I wasn't noticing any change. I gave it one more chance yesterday and I noticed that with one eye patched (no matter which eye) I can look at the screen with 40% brightness on my laptop, whereas before it had to be almost 0% (had to use additional screen dimmer to go below default minimum). It doesn't affect my other symptom, which is "eyes being out of sync/misaligned" feeling, but it does lower the pain when looking at screen. Pretty good news and interseting finding I would say.

    UPDATE: after 3 days of patching, new kind of pain is occuring in eye that is looking at the screen, so this is not a solution for me, I'm stopping it for now, maybe will come back to it later…

    7 days later

    mazury

    Hey, I did do vision therapy for about 3-4 months. I did it myself at home for about an hour a day. I unfortunately didn't see any noticeable improvements, so I stopped, since the time investment was getting to be a bit much. My prism lenses have also stopped providing enough relief, so I'm stuck with my old prescription.

    I did see a Dr. Debby trained specialist and am getting new prescription glasses within 1-2 weeks. Literally putting all my hopes on them at this point.

      bkdo Hey, I did do vision therapy for about 3-4 months. I did it myself at home for about an hour a day.

      Did you do this with an optometrist or just self-guided? I think with our condition, the VT needs to be under a specialist to be successful.

      bkdo My prism lenses have also stopped providing enough relief,

      This could be "eating" the prism. Over time, sometimes the eyes/brain need stronger and stronger prism.

        ryans I agree with eating the prisms, but only when the condition is CI, for DI it's actually helpful, that's what I read in "clinical management of binocular vision". And I think @martin had success with prisms, but he also had DI. It's important to get the diagnosis right at first.

        ryans

        I used my Kaiser optometrist/opthalmologist's exercises and did them at home, they took about an hour a day and I didn't really see any relief, unfortunately.

        Yeah, from what I was told, relief with brand new prism lenses usually last about a month, then you'll need recalibration. Then, your prescription can change year-to-year. It's frustrating 😞

        9 days later

        arturpanteleev Sorry for late answer, been working long days (behind my screens).

        When I started training I didn’t understand that this training was going to work. Less headache, but my eyes was still strained, after some weeks I could see results that the training worked.

          mike thank you! I tried to do patching a few times, but every time quit halfway through. Gonna do another trying

          3 months later

          Eye patching changed my life. I was so happy, that I can use devices that I cannot from a long time again. But unfortunately something went wrong. I was patching one of my eyes from about a year and recently I think I overloaded my eyes/eye (or maybe my body), got a lot of stress, and lose the ability to use devices to which I got my eyes used by patching. Now I can say, that I’m starting over, somehow I reset my eyes to the stage that I cannot use almost anything at all. The worst part of the problem is that, now the patching wont work at all. I irritate my eyes very quickly, No matter if I’m patching or not. Have any of you had such a problem? Did anyone have to start from scratch? If so, do you have any advice? I'm a little heartbroken because I was able to use all these devices fairly normally and enjoy life in my own way, and now I've lost that opportunity, not knowing why 🙁

            bisk89 Give it time and keep it up. There have been days where patching was less effective but it always came back.

            Unfortunately for me there seems to be no improvement of the underlying condition which means I wlil likely be patching for the rest of my life.

            bisk89 Had you got to the point that you "healed" your eyes and could use any screen without patching or did you continuously patch for one year? In the latter case, how many hours per day?

              AGI I Was at the point where I can, for example, play on my PS5 for one hour without patching at all, after one hour patch one eye for half of an hour, and then play another ~hour without patching, etc. It was like cure for me, cause before I cannot use almost any devices at all. Unfortunately, despite trying and patching, I wasn't able to last longer without patching than 1/1,5 hour in front of a screen. Although, sometimes when i'm drinking alcohol, I was able to last much longer without patching, even 2-3 hours

              • AGI replied to this.
              • AGI likes this.

                bisk89 I see. I too noticed some "relaxation" drinking beer or wine.
                Have you seen any eye specialist? Any diagnosis?

                2 months later

                I started patching a month ago after mike replied to my topic about eyestrain with modern devices. Firstly I couldn’t believe in this and thought that’s bullshit. I tried a few days, but nothing changed. Eyestrain, dry eyes, tinitus and headache as regular. But after a few weeks I felt a huge relief. Now I can use ALL devices with patching my right eye and continue using this method to full recovery.

                I want to say @mike thank you. I can’t even describe what I feel. You really saved my life after a 2 years of nightmare.

                  CrestfallDreaming I think so, but I don’t know certainly. I did some tests to check which eye is dominant, but different tests give different results. I just try with both eyes and choose patching right, because it’s most comfortable for me.

                  23 days later

                  Hi all,
                  I'd love a bit of advice as this seems to be the most active thread about patching. Over the course of 2.5 years, I, like many of you, have tried almost everything: Neurolens prism glasses, e-ink and reflective LCD monitor, bluelight blockers, punctal plugs, autologous eye drops, and recently saw a vision therapist (who, yet again, told me dry eye was my root cause, not BVD). The only thing that allows me to work on the computer pain-free is patching. It only seems to work when I patch the right eye. My right eye has weaker vision, but I believe it is my dominant eye after doing tests. It's also the one that gets the most pain.

                  So patching works--great! The problem is, when I take my patch off to do meetings (I work 40 hours per week on the computer and tend to have about 3 hours of virtual meetings per day), the pain is stronger and quicker to sink in than when I'm not in the habit of patching. This worries me that patching is making my binocular vision even worse, yet it's the only thing that allows me to function at work. Any thoughts or advice?

                    dev