I’m going in for eye surgery tomorrow and made a quick video to help explain what’s going on and as a record for myself to see what things looked like before surgery.

Sorry for the awkward faces at the end there, the camera battery was dying and kept flashing error messages at me :) This is the longer explanation, part of an email I sent to family when I was first looking into surgery:

So, most of you know I have eye problems. My eyes work independently of each other and I’ve never been able to see in 3d. I see a 2d world, although it’s normal for me and my brain has learned to adapt. I use monocular visual cues like size comparison, determining that if something is blocking another object it’s in front of it and picking up on the angles and planes of objects (I know a cube isn’t flat because I can see the different planes, even if the cube doesn’t appear to be protruding out towards me in space).

I had 3 surgeries as a little kid to help correct the problem, and while they did make it better…I’ve noticed my left eye has wandered a bit more over time. I also get headaches some days from it and sporadic double vision. The goal of the surgery would be to align my eyes 100% straight, with hope that once they were straight I’d be able to see in 3d (although that’s not a guarantee, since my brain never really learned that skill). Mainly, headaches and double vision would disappear and I would have cosmetically looking straight eyes. There’s a 10% chance the doctor could under correct or over correct but he said I’m definitely not the worst case he’s worked with. I’m 35 diopters off center and if I were 10-12 diopters off he said to probably not bother with surgery.

I’d really love for my eyes to be straight, you have no idea how awkward it is to talk to new people and have them wonder if you’re indeed actually looking at them. Some friends have said they don’t even really notice, but it’s definitely something I notice every day. I’m excited to have the chance to change things! I’ll be back on in a few days to a week with some updates.