No matter whether you love her, hate her, or are just plain oblivious to her, you've got to admit that when Abigail Van Buren writes about something, it gets noticed. And that is exactly what happened earlier this year when Dear Abby wrote a column about vision therapy and how it helped a patient with convergence insufficiency.
The story is an extremely common one to vision therapy doctors: a patient struggled in school despite being bright and hard-working. No amount of tutoring or other assistance helped. Then the convergence insufficiency was discovered and treated and things improved immeasurably. This is because convergence insufficiency is one of the most common binocular vision problems and, fortunately, it is one of the most straight-forward to treat. But it can only be treated with vision therapy, not simply glasses and/or contacts. The result is that there are many, many positive success stories out there that you can read here.
This one short article did more to educate people about the benefits of vision therapy than many books and papers that have been published. I saw many patients who had been struggling in school that came to the office for an evaluation specifically because they (or a loved) one saw the article. I know that other vision specialists around the country did as well.
Hopefully in the coming year, vision therapy will get even more publicity. In the meantime, you can check out Dear Abby's column by clicking here.
Be Well!
Nathan Bonilla-Warford, OD
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.
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