A hearty welcome to Sally Rye, a 34 year-old mother of three, who made her debut in the blogosphere a few days ago as Strabby. She writes: My eyes crossed when I was a baby, and I was diagnosed with strabismus. My first pair of glasses, at age 4, were bifocals. During childhood, patches over my “good eye” were applied to save the “bad eye” from developing amblyopia. My second eye surgery at age 11 resulted in cosmetic perfection; my eyes appear straight. My left eye is amblyopic, so it is “weak” and the data it sends to my brain is sub-par quality, and it tends to dissolve. Both of my eyes turn in at times; mostly they look 100% normal.
Sally credits Sue Barry’s book Fixing My Gaze, for educating her about developmental optometrists. It is wonderful to see how far Sue Barry’s influence has extended, and how many people she has touched. As you can see from her photo, although Sally reports that at most times her eyes look normal, she has a cosmetically noticeable right esotropia.
I discovered Strabby serendipitously, through her mention of a PowerPoint presentation I did on Neuroplasticity in Amblyopia embedded in a blog piece that I wrote. The part of Sally’s comments that got me charged up was when she wrote today:
It seems to me that when I start my vision therapy, I will begin to really understand my current visual abilities, and all the deficits I’ve been living with my whole life.
Wow, Sally. If you can articulate that, you’re halfway there already. We’ll be anxioulsy awaiting updates on your blog about your progress in vision therapy. Best wishes for success!
The VisionHelp Blog 
Strabby is one of many patient we can atribute to Sue’s book. I have had a number of patients who have come to me for vision therapy after reading Sue’s experiences. Most have been told their whole life by ophthalmologists that after 7 years of age thre is no hope of devloping binocular vision. I’m hoping my sucessful patients will blog about what they have accomplished through vision therapy, or better yet write a book.
Your point is crucial, Don. Hopefully the groundwork that Sue laid with her book, and the emergence of blogs like Strabby by patients who are articulate and well informed, will put more nails in the coffin of the critical period “surgery or bust” ophthalmo-mythology.
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