Tues Jan 19th
Today was my sons birthday and I had to miss it. At least I celebrated it on Saturday. Wow what a hard day. I was so exhausted from training blindfold all day. I finally started to break down at lunch when I had to figure out how to feed myself without seeing anything. I felt like a five year old getting food all over the place and didn’t even bother with pouring myself a drink. I was so frustrated and the kid next to me who was blind his whole life was like “what’s the big deal just eat!” Can you slap someone when you’re blind? I literally could not figure out how to feed myself. You feel like such an invalid when that happens. Then I had to put my dishes away….WHAT!!! But how the heck am I going to do that with a cane that I’m barely learning to use!!! I needed such a breather so badly. I spent the rest of the day practicing traveling and navigating the building with my cane: stairs, hallways, little tiny corners, offices, furniture. I tended to get myself stuck into a corner and not be able to figure my way out.Then I’d be in the middle of what felt like no where and have no idea what direction went where. I’m telling you I have touched everything and everyone today. I just hope none of it was inappropriate. I have to learn to trust the cane and not try to use my hands to feel where I am going. So hard!!! I also learned letters A-I in Braille. I’m actually a left handed brailler, whereas I write with my right hand. Strange. My fingers are going to feel so calloused after a while. So I had to read phrases and words with the letters in them. Apparently I was very fast and covered a suprising amount of ground until I said “ok my brain is going to explode. I need to stop!”
One of the harder things for me is not being able to lipread and I can’t follow conversations as well. Keeping track of who I know by their voices, and where someone is speaking is really challenging. My ears are just not quite up to par if we all hadn’t noticed already!
When I got to take my sleep shades off my eyes actually hurt and I was so disoriented with what I was seeing. I guess my brain spent the day re-wiring or figuring things out without sight that to suddenly turn that on was overwhelming. I had to where sunglasses indoors.
Teaching went well tonight. I taught my first college trig class and wasn’t nervous at all. I guess I was so worn out from training that I didn’t have energy to be nervous. I wish I could have someone watch and tell me if I am doing well teaching or if I’m one of those wild all over the board type of professors. I do enjoy teaching adults more so than kids with attitudes. Hopefully class continues to go well and I don’t find out that I really am a lousy teacher. I like it and feel like I can teach but I guess we’ll see what others think.
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