Reise Heiberg wants to play baseball.
He also wants to do better in school - even better than the As and Bs that he received last year in the third grade.
But until Reise, 9, of Hollidaysburg, learned that he suffered from a common but frequently misdiagnosed eye problem called convergence insufficiency, these things were either very hard or impossible for him to do.
Convergence insufficiency is characterized by an inability to converge both eyes inward as a subject they're focusing on gets closer to the face. Symptoms include blurred vision, seeing double, eye strain, decreased hand-eye coordination, headaches and difficulty concentrating during reading tasks.
Reise's eyes looked relatively normal in early childhood except for a slight lazy eye doctors said he'd grow out of. He seemed advanced mentally for his age when his mother, Jodie Heiberg, put him into kindergarten slightly early due to Reise's summer birthday.
By the end of that year, his teachers reported that Reise was doing well in every subject, but was reading far below the level he should have been.
No one knew why.
"It baffled [his teacher], it baffled us," Jodie said. "The way he spoke, the way he annunciated was just beyond his age and beyond other kids who were older than him."
When math started getting harder in second grade, Reise struggled in that subject, too.
No one would've thought his 20/20 vision could be the problem until Reise's grandmother, Shirley Heiberg, was reading a book that mentioned convergence insufficiency. She started looking into it as the possible cause for Reise's difficulties in school.
"Common sense told me, 'If he was smart, why wasn't he getting it?'" Shirley said.
And if Shirley hadn't come across convergence insufficiency, Reise still wouldn't be getting it. Testing for the problem isn't a routine procedure in eye doctors' offices or schools, despite the fact that evidence shows up to 13 percent of the population may be suffering from it.
Reise said the symptoms of convergence insuffciency affected him to the point that he would fake sick in order to avoid going to school.
"I used to have a really big problem going. I used to say I had a stomachache when I didn't," Reise said. "Now, I really don't care."
Reise suffers less now that he has been diagnosed and received the proper treatment. After being fitted with prism glasses, Reise began therapy under the guidance of Dr. Marla Moon, an optometrist who practices at Nittany Eye Associates in State College. Dr. Moon has patients who travel from as far as West Virginia to be treated for this problem, but she said any eye doctor should be able to treat it.
"But they don't have the experience or don't take the time to deal with it," she added.
Convergence insufficiency continues to fly under the radar, and kids like Reise are either misdiagnosed or undergo surgery they don't need.
Moon said many children who are diagnosed with conditions like attention deficit disorder or other behavioral issues actually have a vision problem, and are therefore on medications they don't need to be on.
"That's another reason you want to get them early," Moon said. "You want to get them before they say 'I'm giving up here, and I'm going to start acting out.'"
Moon said she has an 80 to 85 percent success rate with the in-office and at home therapy she provides. This includes a series of computer exercises used to train the muscles in the eye to converge properly.
"It's like exercise," Moon said. "It's not going to get better unless you use it."
Reise said he didn't really like doing the therapy, and described it almost like playing a boring video game. But he knows the importance of completing his therapy exercises and building up his eyes' muscle memory.
"I need to keep doing this, or I could go back to needing more help," he said.
It's certainly taken a lot of help to get Reise to where he is today. Aside from regularly driving him to State College and paying for therapy with Moon, his family had to hire a personal tutor last summer to bring his math and reading levels up. He doesn't have to wear his glasses as often anymore. Despite this, Jodie said she's glad the family can now focus on a future of better grades and baseball games - and hope other families don't have to go through what they did.
"I always knew he was advanced, then on paper it wasn't coming through and I was so frustrated," she said. "I knew my child was intelligent... I'm just glad he was diagnosed and treated and the grades have improved. It's just nice for that finally to be realized. It's good it got caught early while he was still learning the basics."
Mirror Staff Writer Beth Ann Downey can be reached at 946-7520.
