I am a 24 yr old female and I wore patches and glasses as a child but I guess after I stopped treatment my left eye began to get weak again. It wasnt as obvious a couple of years ago but Ive noticed it alot more this year especially in pictures or if someone wants to skype me. My biggest insecurity is not being able to directly look someone in the face. My other fear is that I will not fall in love. I want to be able to look into the face of the person im dating and if I cannot even look my own family in the eye I know I wont hold up with those outside the fam. I have the strength of God in me but I am so afraid to be in social scences because of that.

You could have easily done what so many do by deciding it isn’t worth the effort or social stigma to be her friend. But you didn’t. You met one of the biggest needs people with turned eyes have. Most hunger for genuine friendship, yet few people are willing to make the effort to see beyond their eyes.

Thank you for being a real friend to a person with a turned eye. Most people with turned eyes have developed compassion for others’ needs through their own suffering. No doubt she will be a wonderful friend to you as well.

Lois

My story is the same as many probably. Teachers and others would comment that one eye drifted. But they never would say it was the same eye. When I was in 4th grade my mother and I discussed surgery. I wanted none of that so I made it a point to just learn to control it. Eventually, I could distinguish how it felt to look through one eye or the other and just learned to work with them.

My vision has always been perfect. Only now, at 45, do I use reading glasses sometimes, but that’s not uncommon from what I understand. As others have mentioned, I do have a problem on eye tests that isolate the eyes and have you talk about the merged results. I ran into this issue unexpectedly at the DMV one year. I looked in the machine and read the line of text to the examiner. She looked at me and said “Read it again.” I knew something was wrong so I took another look and through one eye then the next. Only then did I discover that the lines of text were actually made by a combination of the two sides. So I had read one side which had letters missing that were supposed to be picked up by the other eye. I quickly read the lines again, closing one eye then the other to put the whole picture together.

My right eye seems to be the dominant one. If I’m not paying attention to it, I’ll find that I’m usually using it to watch TV, read, etc. One good side-effect is terrific peripheral vision in the drifting eye! I usually find myself driving with my right eye so I’ve always got one eye on my driver’s side mirror at the same time!

I hope that all of you who also have this condition can find ways to minimize or correct it. Maybe you can do what I did and learn to “feel” it so that you can control it too. I’m sorry I can’t give any better advice than that.