Carol’s Magic Glasses Relieve Anxiety
"I could say the correct words, but not in the right order."
Carol had been to the ER twice for what doctors thought were strokes.
The pattern was always the same. Her vision would dissolve into squiggly lines. Then her speech would slip. The right words, in the wrong order. Crowded places set it off. The mall on a Saturday. A Red Wings game. The Renaissance Festival. After each episode the workup came back clean. Not a stroke. No one could say what it was.
A coworker handed her a link at lunch one day. The questionnaire was for something called BVD. Carol read down the list and recognized herself in line after line. She took the full quiz at home, then booked with Dr. Mary Jo.
Dr. Mary Jo found it: misaligned eye muscles the brain had been compensating for. The treatment was a pair of glasses with prisms hidden in the lenses.
Since the day Carol started wearing them, she can count her vision disturbances on one hand. None of them landed her in the ER.
The condition is hereditary. Carol had her three kids tested. Her daughter, who had her own anxiety, got fitted at Christmas in sixth grade. Her oldest son was being evaluated for ADHD when she brought him in. Dr. Mary Jo found BVD instead. He never started ADHD medication. He’s a freshman in college now, getting straight A’s.
The glasses don’t look like prism glasses. Carol stopped noticing them years ago.
00:00 Hi, my name is Carol. My story started several years ago when a former coworker had received the link to the website with the questionnaire
00:10 and was sharing it with me during lunch one day. And when I was reading the questionnaire, I noticed that I resonated with so many of the lines on it,
00:19 so I decided to go home and I took the online quiz. I had a big anxiety in very busy places.
00:28 So Renaissance Festival, busy day at the mall, a red wing hockey game would always be very anxiety ridden for me.
00:37 I had no idea that it was my eyes that were doing this. I kept having vision disruptions where all
00:44 of a sudden my vision would start to go. I would just not be able to see anything except squiggly wiggly lines everywhere.
00:50 And then eventually my speech would start to go as well, where I could say the correct words, but not in the right order.
00:59 A couple of times they landed me in the emergency room. They thought I was having a stroke. Then it was determined I wasn’t having a stroke.
01:06 I started seeing Dr. Mary Jo, and it has been a magical history ever since. She has helped change my life
01:15 and my three kids’ lives for the better. Dr. Mary Jo determined that it was my eyes. And through the course of the magic glasses,
01:24 I can count on one hand how many vision disturbances I’ve had, and none of them have been very significant.
01:29 It has been an absolute game changer, and there’s no more emergency visits. She was explaining to me that this is a hereditary component.
01:38 I have three kids. My daughter, when she started sixth grade, I decided that it was time to get her tested.
01:45 Turns out she had it, and at Christmas time, she got her first pair of magic glasses. Her anxiety has just come way down. It has been a blessing.
01:56 My now 19-year-old, we had him tested at about the same time that we were having him tested for ADHD.
02:04 He was having a hard time concentrating and he is wicked smart, but he couldn’t concentrate. I brought him in to see Dr. Mary Jo.
02:14 She fitted him for glasses. He did have some BVD that she wanted to correct. He is now a freshman in college, getting all A’s,
02:23 and he has not medicated. He has never been treated for ADHD. The anxiety has come down. His grades are up, and he is refocused.
02:32 When we say magic glasses, they have prisms hidden in them. So the prisms are specifically placed in the glasses
02:40 to help realign the muscles in our eyes. And we’re so used to ’em, we don’t even see them anymore.
