November 22 - White Cane Lesson Learned

I feel a little silly writing this after my words of wisdom from last week. I suppose that I still have a lesson or two yet to learn. I should remember that I need to always have my cane with me. I didn’t exactly do that this past week.

Here is the story.

Lyle injured his back and we decided to go to the doctor. The doctor referred us to the local hospital for an x-ray. All good so far and I had my white cane not exactly with me but in the car. It was folded and on the floor in the passenger side. I didn’t take it into the hospital with me because really we were just going in for an x-ray and it was the local and familiar hospital and I had Lyle’s arm to guide me.

Well, the x-ray was taken but there was an anomaly. Lyle was referred further afield for a CT scan. No problem except that the doctor insisted that the safest way to travel there was by ambulance. By this stage Lyle was dressed in one of those pretty hospital gowns and I didn’t think that I could find my way back to the car by myself to get my cane.

Fortunately, we lucked out with an amazing pair of ambulance attendants. Bonnie took the car keys and made a quick dash out to our car to retrieve my cane before we set out again. How foolish I was not to have the cane with me in the first place.

That night we were shipped around for a further CT scan and more tests in a larger city hospital. Although I travelled with Lyle in the ambulance, we were often separated when he needed to go for these tests. How glad I was to have my cane with me. It was definitely a lesson learned. I use a fold up cane so it is very simple to have it with me even when I feel that I only need Lyle’s arm to guide me.

The end of the story is that Lyle is feeling better although still needs to be careful with his back. As for me, well I learned yet another white cane lesson.

We are also very grateful to Bonnie and Craig, the two ambulance attendants based out of Rimbey. We also owe a huge thank you to the doctors and nurses at the University Hospital in Edmonton.  Lyle received excellent care there and I was treated with care and courtesy as his accompanying spouse.

November 15 - Learning New Skills As A Visually Impaired Person

When my sight changed all those years ago now, I was given two pieces of advice. The first was from my ophthalmologist who told me very bluntly that I should go home and learn braille. He told me that I would likely become blind, that there was nothing he could do for me and that I should start learning braille right away. The second piece of advice came from Lyle. Because computers were just coming into their own, Lyle suggested that I learn touch typing. This was good advice.

Well, after several attempts, I’m afraid that I didn’t master braille. Fortunately though the pessimistic prediction of that particular ophthalmologist hasn’t come to pass either. I am indeed “legally blind” but I do have much more sight than he forecast.

However, in the initial days of my vision loss I persisted in teaching myself to type. Indeed, I have come from tapping away with two fingers to becoming a fairly proficient typist.

It was at our last peer support group meeting that Denis reminded me of all this. Lyle had read out a lengthy manuscript that I had written. Denis was curious to know if I had typed it myself or if Lyle had done this for me. I felt pretty good when I acknowledged that I had done it on my own.

It was only after our meeting that I started to mull over the different skills I have acquired over the years. When I was a fully sighted person, I didn’t anticipate that I would need to have more than a two finger typing skill. I now type with both speed and reasonable accuracy. Nor did I anticipate that I would be using an audible screen reading program on my computer instead of using my eyes to see the print on the screen.  It was another skill to be learned.

As a fully sighted person, I was an avid reader. Little did I know that as a visually impaired person I would now need to develop my listening skills if I was to continue to enjoy books, magazines, newspapers and other literary works. Listening instead of seeing is a learned skill.

As a sighted person, I had never thought about using a white cane as a mobility tool.  Again, this was something I needed to learn. There is an art to using a cane safely. I took mobility cane instruction with Janice at the Edmonton CNIB office. Thanks Janice for your patience with me.

While becoming partially sighted might not be the best thing to happen to a person, it is not the worst either. Certainly for me, diminished sight created opportunities for new learning experiences. As well as the above obvious challenges, I went back to university and earned a Masters Degree. I gave the valedictorian speech at my graduation and was offered other opportunities for public speaking.

In spite of, or perhaps because of the varying difficulties associated with some of these lessons, I found that I was in a position where I could share my experiences with others in similar situations. Of all the new things that I have learned over this journey with vision loss, I feel that lesson of sharing with others is the experience which has meant the most to me.

November 10 - Sight and Sound

Lyle and I both enjoy live on-stage performances and concerts of all kinds. I think that I have mentioned this before. We like plays, musicals, single and group performers and so on. However, when we book our tickets, we always choose carefully so that I can get the most out of what I can see and hear. This sight and sound combination is fairly irrelevant to Lyle but because we are a team, he always obliges me with our seat choice.

For the most part, this choice of seating works well. Alas, it was not the case for a concert we attended last week. Celtic Thunder was performing at the Penticton Entertainment Centre, B.C.  – a venue which doubles as the ice arena in season. Our seats were in the second row, seats which we thought would be a good choice. This was not the case.

For starters, the front row was set far back from the stage. I knew immediately that I wouldn’t be able to see anything, but I reasoned that this was a musical group and I would really just be listening for the sound.

Sound it was! It turned out that we were seated in front of one of the speakers and the bass appeared to be turned up full volume. My chest vibrated with every bass note.  At one point, I was so startled that I fairly jumped off my hard stadium style seat.

Lyle and I were both disappointed with the concert. We thought afterwards that the selection of musical items might also have contributed to our disappointment. We had anticipated that the program would have included more of an Irish flavour.

Now this post is not just a critique of one concert. Instead I wish to say that we don’t intend to let this one night hinder us from enjoying future musicals and other live performances. Again we will try to find seats that will allow the most beneficial combination of sight and sound for me, but whatever the result, we will make the most of the experience. There is certainly something to be said for being part of a live audience. In fact, at our Celtic Thunder concert, we were seated in the midst of some Celtic Thunder groupies, and I enjoyed their enthusiasm even more than the concert itself.

There is always something to take away from every experience.

November 1 - Blindness and Hope

This past week, I was talking with an elderly friend. My friend has no sight in her left eye and over this past while, she realized that the sight in her right eye was deteriorating. My friend expressed such sadness at the prospect of becoming completely blind. She said that she felt that there was no purpose left in her life.

The conversation with my friend took me back to the early days of my own vision loss. It has been some time now since I dealt with that dramatic and traumatic change. I know that I have come a long way since then but I can still recall the emotional upheaval that initial diagnosis brought. 

In many ways, the initial experience of vision loss has given me some insight and understanding of what other people might be experiencing. Although we all feel grief and loss in ways that are unique to our own situations, there are also common threads.  When someone is grieving over a loss, it is not unusual for them to have feelings of denial. Why is this happening, or why is it happening to me? They might have feelings of anger, of frustration or confusion. There is often a time of extreme sadness bordering on depression. This is what my friend was feeling. While all these feelings can overwhelm a person at different times and last for differing durations, eventually most people reach a stage of acceptance.

I like to think that my own experience has broadened my horizons and brought me to a place where I can be more sensitive to the needs of others. I would like my life to show that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Dealing with blindness or change because of vision loss can be challenging for sure, but life can go on. I prefer to look at life with hope and optimism.