Brett shared the url to this video in our Eyes Apart Strabismus Support group recently. Brett writes, “If strabismus seems like a barrier to living our dreams and gaining acceptance, just imagine the hurdles these two beautiful dancers have managed to overcome.”
The ballet “Hand in Hand” is performed by Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei, who lost limbs in separate auto accidents.
Ma, who lost her arm when she was 19, says, “It’s the power of love and the strength of joining hands, which keeps us persevering.”
Zhai was only 4 years old when he lost his leg. The determination, strength, and grace he displays reminds us that we are only as handicapped as we allow ourselves to be.
You can read more about these inspiring dancers at the links below:
I think this is very inspiring !,I’m only 18 and strasbismus has honestly almost driven me mad .
I cope much better with it now but it’ll never go completley .You always have to think how much worse off you could be ,at least you can still see ,at least we still have our arms and legs .Also one problem I had was that I thought that I was in some way inferior to everyone else .
Imagine walking down a street and you see someone with no legs .You don’t judge them as a person if anything you admire them .Its only immature and empathic people who make fun and laugh.
Anyway I hope this helps you in some way ,looking at it from this point of view certainly helped me . After all its only another of life’s obsticles.
Nick
Very inspiring to watch that video.
Makes strabismus seem like an elbow scratch.
My son has strabismus and after 4 surgeries his alignment is within a range that is not noticeable to an untrained eye.
He is a strong and confident child and loves attention. Treated for his condition as a young child, when people stared at him he smiled nice and wide with his beautiful crossed-eyes. As the saying goes…. “it was harder on us that it was on him.”
- Johnny Vargas
(author of “Our Journey with Strabismus” a resource for parents of children with strabismus)
Truly Amazing. Very inspiring that they use their Abilities instead of focusing on Disabilities. We all have some kind of challenge in our lives whether it is emotional or physical. We all have to accept and love ourselves the way we are. Humans are not perfect. We just have to find our strengths.
Like nick I’m only 18 too and I’ve lived with strasbismus since i was born and I’ve always hated it i feel its always held me back i hate making eye contact and almost always have my fringe covering it, Alot of people have told me they do not notice it which after being teased for years at school i find hard to believe and i’m a photographer and i attempt alot of self portraits and my eye is one thing that i’m very scared of people noticing and commenting on it as i’ve had a few public embarrassments where people have outright said ” whats wrong with your eye ” Or the good old original ” Sorry where you talking to me?, i thought you were looking behind me ”
I had two surgeries as a child and my eye wasn’t strong enough to hold in the correct place and now i’m too scared to go through with surgery because i’ve heard that i could end up with my eye looking worse.
Emma
hello I am ram ia m 26 and ia m living with strabismus from childhood i have a lazy right eye which showes outward strabismus in it
I lost everything in my life because of it i am so so so talented person but everyday i am losing chances i lost my shcool days and my colleage days and now i am loosing my work days i am not happy in my life i cant make any eye contact with people i lost my self confidence and i have no friends now no friends
and i am so talented as an actor ; i love acting and i am losing all chances becuase of strabismus
and my family dont know anything about my sufferings each day
please if anyone can help me by telling me how we can make a good eye contact …please help
hi, i’m 36 years old and have lived with strabismus all of my life. i was teased as a child even as a adult people still ask me am i talking to them or if i’m lookin at them. it has been the most difficult thing in my life that i had to deal with. It is so embarrasing to me and i understand how the other bloggers feel. It can not only take away your confidence and self esteem it can also still your dreams i had a employer ask me if my eyes would stop me from doing my job. I know from expience it can be difficult.
Life sucks when you have strabismus.
People just dont understand how painful it can be.
Its like if you were trying to hide a major problem by not having eye contact with others.
Hey Ram i have exactly the same problem as yours. Felt like i am reading my own feelings written by someone else. Recently i have been reading about vision therapy and havent gone for any surgery yet just because of the fear. Its really annoying when you cant make eye contact with anyone.
Hi, I am Brian and i have extropia which is strabismus in my left eye only, it really gets me down all the time, i cant work because of it, cos of the lack of confidence, find social encounters very difficult, i have had 2 operations when i was 6 and when i was 15 but the squint come back, i was gutted, i havnt worked for 10 years now cos of this, we are all feeling the same i have noticed, so i know exactly how you all feel, i am scared to have an operation again because i have a fear of being knocked out, i just cant do it fullstop, i really wish i could go through with it again. but i have been looking on the internet and i am sure i have found a miracle cure to a certain degree, you can have blotox injected in to your eye with a very this needle, only takes about 10 minutes, whilst they freeze your eye using drops, this blotox makes your eye go back to normal for 3-4 months and i think it costs 200 pounds each session, i am very excited by this, it is unbelivable.. im gonna look in to this. after the 3-4 months you have to go back and so on and so on, but it is a small price to pay i think for happiness and confidence back in your life again. hope this info helps you all too, and good luck.
just to update you, i have now decided that i am going to get a prosthetic contact lense as my vision in my eye with the squint is pretty good so i think that will be fine, but im not sure about all of you? maybe your vision is not that good so i dont know if that will work for you all. good look anyway, as there is options out there for all of us.
This interview persuaded me to just get the surgery. I’m 25 and it will be my 2nd, 1st was at age 5. Intermittent exotropia of some kind. Besides difficulty making eye contact, I’ve found reading text increasingly difficult over the years. Has anyone else had this problem?
Also, people document their recoveries on Youtube- it doesn’t look too bad a few days into recovery.
http://www.childrenshospital.org/clinicalservices/Site1763/mainpageS1763P4.html
Yep, its a fact, no matter how bad off you think you are there is always someone worse off!
Yes, its a problem with the opposite sex – they have this thing about eye contact and looking deep into the mans eyes – they cant do it with us! But dispite that I have had several attractive girlfriends and been married twice
SO DONT GIVE UP!
Paul
Cheer up Emma – your not only one who has been on the receiving end of cruel thoughtless comments. It can be hard with strangers esp those who insist on making ‘eye contact’
I also have had people looking away thinking that im looking at something or somebody else.
Surgery does work for some people – but not for me.
As I have said in my other posts all you can do is live your life as fully as you can and people will tend to respect you more.
I spent 9 years in the Household Cavalry in London (1971 to 1980) An did all the training and duties so called normal soldiers did.
I have also driven for at least 30 years and still do – no one has ever said that my problem might affect my ability to drive. I recently had a stringent medical to work on London airport and there was no problem!
I have also been married twice and have 4 ordinary duaghters… If I can do it anyone can!!
Good luck Emma.
Paul
i m losing my confidence day by day because i can’t make proper eye contact. i have faced so many difficulties frm my childhood.
further to my last comment on this site on december 26th 2009, just to update you about the botox treatment injections in eyr for exotropia. well i had my interview at sunderland eye infirmary north east and the woman said i should be allowed to have the botox injections, a bit scared about it but i think a small price to pay, think it only lasts 10 mins or so. looking forward to it. i think botox could be the answer for most of us, it does seem the way forward. you have to have it done every four month though but its worth it, and its free by the way which did surprise me as i thought i would have to pay at least 200 pound per session. so everyone look in to botox. good luck. just to say this site is excellent, really glad i came acroos it. brian north east.
I am 43 and a newcomer to this site, which I recently discovered. I was diagnosed with strabismus in infancy and have had three surgeries, at ages 1, 24, and 38.
In several ways, my mother was “good” about strabismus: she noticed the problem (which seems to be VERY recessive in her family) when I was very young, insisted that I be treated by respected ophthalmologists, and, although she tends toward frugality, never balked about buying quality glasses from good opticians. (If you have strabismus and something is a national chain, whether optical or otherwise, don’t buy glasses from it. . .but that’s another story.)
In one respect, my mother was “bad” about strabismus: I don’t remember a time in my life when I was NOT self-conscious about photography. Told multiple times that we should care more about how our bodies work than how we look, I was also sometimes instructed to “look to the side” for pictures. With or without a reminder, I NEVER forgot.
After my strabismus seriously reversed during my senior year in high school, I cursed myself for not having had senior pictures taken sooner: eventually, during a quick, cut-rate session, I had one pose taken. . .looking down.
During my last year of high school and in college, I naively thought that if I ignored my strabismus, other people would too. I dressed somewhat flamboyantly in thrift-shop finds, in part because I liked them, but also so I could pretend people were staring at my clothes, not my eyes. Reality bit and drew blood one day at my part-time job (market research interviewing, where I could work unseen) when I learned that a co-worker had described me as the “cross-eyed girl.” (No, really, I’m the outspoken poet WOMAN who likes fashion hats and long scarves!)
In part because I felt ugly, I didn’t date until I was 21. The few boyfriends I had always loved me more for my mind than my body; one benefit of having an appearance impairment is that I didn’t attract “jerks” who only cared about looks (and sex). Well past 30, I eventually married a longtime boyfriend who, by the way, has BEAUTIFUL eyes.
I admit that I would be no beauty even without strabmismus, and I’m not generally shallow, but I FELT shallow for caring about my appearance until I was in my early twenties and read “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” by author Alice Walker: A childhood injury left Walker totally blind in one eye, and she STILL cared more about how she looked than how she could see:
http://www.wsu.edu/~hughesc/alice-walker.htm
In my late twenties, I volunteered at a children’s orthopedic hospital. One of the patients, a boy about seven years old whom I thought I’d befriended, asked me if I was “cross-eyed” and requested that I not make eye contact with him. Considering that he was in a body cast after major surgery and was certainly much more “disabled” than me, I was taken aback: yes, he needed a wheelchair, but (in his mind) was still good-looking. I was UGLY. (Ironically, one of the reasons I felt I was a good volunteer was precisely because of my strabismus experiences: I knew not to be condescending to the children or treat them like “freaks.”)
One of the hardest things about having strabismus is that we are among the (nearly) hidden disabled and can sometimes “pass.” Unlike amputees, those who use wheelchairs, or the blind who have canes or guide dogs, we are not obviously impaired from a distance. We may look reasonably “normal” on some days, and not on others. Even when people notice, most think strabismus is primarily a cosmetic problem rather than a functional one. I myself believed this until I had a severe reversal at age 18, only because no one had ever told me otherwise. Yes, I was bad at “ball” sports and flunked the road test in driver’s ed (I learned in my late 30s that I also have difficulty with sensory integration), but I was also a voracious reader and fairly good at visual arts.
Two of my great-uncles were private pilots, and one of my uncles was a WWII co-pilot. I, too, have always loved being AGL (above ground level). I knew from the time I was young that I couldn’t be a professional pilot, but will always regret that, due to strabismus and other brain-based disabilities, I cannot even be a private pilot. Despite knowing I couldn’t fulfill the dream, I took two closed-cockpit (general aviation) and some open-cockpit (ultralight) lessons “for the experience,” and, in the sky, felt completely at home. For me, not being able to fly is like having an amputated soul.
I am a Unitarian Universalist and do not believe in a “puppeteer” God or that “everything happens for a reason,” however, one could say that I work to give my strabismus meaning. Maybe without it I’d be shallow and vain, perhaps even unkind.
At age 24, after my second surgery, I was grateful that I no longer had chronic diplopia, even though I still experienced it using near vision and needed heavy prism correction. At age 38, after my third surgery, I became very grateful when, much to the postoperative surprise of myself and my ophthalmologist, I no longer had any diplopia and didn’t need prism correction at all. I will always regret having strabismus, but I also know that there are greater disabilities, and that it may have given me some wisdom.
Always remember: What matters most is not how we look, but what we SEE.
Hey
I know how all of you feel too, had bilateral medial strabismis all my life. Sucks. Brian, did the botox work for u? How was it?
What did that botox treatment do for you
did it correct your eye.
i have been ask alot “are you talkign to me” and it crushes me. I’ve had to be on dialysis and had a transplant and you think going through that would change how i feel about my eye it dosent. Ive met alot of transplanted and dialysis people but no one else with extropia
It hurts when people look or ask and its now hittng me very hard and i find myself shutting myself from society i read everyones comments and its feels for the first time im not alone
Brian id liek to know if this botox works i want to be happy and love myself
I’m 19 years and I’m studying to become an optometrist. I Have had strabismus from childhood but it didn’t really bother me until recently when i had to talk about it with my classmates. But i know it can get you down and make you hate yourself! I’m learning to cope with it everyday and try to see how much worse it could have been( I hope it helps)
Hello eveyone i know how you feelI have endure this for years butg with God all things is possible if only you believe. Check out this site http://www.straigteyes.com you never know when you miracle will arrive.
I think not being able to make eye contact is what bothers me the most–like many of you here as well. I’m 20 y.o. and I can’t even look at the professor(s) lecture because it bothers me that much. It’s worse now because I am also on crutches, so I feel like I somehow managed to double my “publicity.” I’m not really that social to begin with and I prefer being alone or with just one person whom I really trust, so I come off as reserved and cold sometimes; but AT LEAST I WOULD DO ANYTHING TO BE ABLE TO HOLD EYE CONTACT AND NOT FEEL AWKWARD. You have to have that: I mean as highly social animals–not trying to offend anyone here who do not believe in evolution–eye contact is equivalent to telepathy. Just think: how many of our emotions (if not all of them) would be empty without that special expressiveness that comes from our eyes (Why so much emphasis on the whites of our eyes?). Our eyes act as signals to so many things, including danger and all our emotions. THEY ARE LITERALLY THE WINDOWS TO OUR SOUL. Not being able to maintain or even attempt eye contact is what adds to my “not-at-home” sensation when I’m in the public eye. It’s strange. Does anxiety make my strabismus worse or does my strabismus make me anxious? I really wonder sometimes.
Hello everyone,
I feel like this site is god sent! It’s great to hear people who understand your problems.
I’m 22 now and I’ve had strabismus in the my right eye (it turns outward) since I was 3 and I got a surgery done when I was around 8. My eye looked fine for a few years but then it was back to square one, exactly when I was halfway through college and adolescents can be really vile.
I started realising that people were noticing my problem when everytime I looked someone straight in the eye, they’d think I was talking to someone behind them. Some would just walk away, some would say ‘Are you talking to me?’ and the others would just look behind their shoulders and look back at me with a strange look. I started cocooning myself to avoid this and soon realised how much of my teenage life I had missed.
However, I’ve had a supportive family, managed to find a great boyfriend who thinks my eyes are the prettiest he’s ever seen and friends who are willing to listen to me when I’m down.
I still find it hard to look people in the eye and I dread having my picture taken.
I failed my driving test because the examiner thought I couldn’t see well enough, just by looking at me. I love cars I love driving around in them and I was broken when I realised I could never drive. It’s something so normal, so routine, everyone does it! Why not me!! Since I could barely play any sport, I thought this would keep me occupied. Well, I guess that wasn’t the plan.
The one thing I hope and pray for, is that if I do get married and have children, I don’t pass it on to them. I know how tough my life has been and I wouldn’t want myself to be responsible for ruining a child’s life.
Thanks for listening and reading. Good luck.