Bosma won’t let you go through vision loss alone

Hello ladies and gentlemen, sorry I have been MIA for a while. I just left you guys hanging I didn’t say why or anything and I apologize for that. I have been busy. I wrote my last blog about 4 weeks ago around that time I was dealing with a whole bunch of issues, one in particular is that I had to have surgery again. My 7^th surgery in the last year. I know, that’s a lot for one person to deal with. I felt as if I was slapped in the face yet again by my eye doctor, I also know he has my best interest at heart and wants for anything for me to be able to see again. The thing is that I am slowly accepting that I may never be able to see again with perfect vision and yeah maybe one day I won’t be able to see very much maybe a blur. So I ask myself when is enough, enough? I told myself that this is it on my right eye and my completely last one will be on my left eye.

I have been covering for the last 2 weeks at home. In that time I had a couple of eye appointments. Same thing, oh the surgery went really well! We won’t be able to see how well this one went until the next one in 2-3 months. That hit me like a ball in the face. I was looking forward to getting that eye patch off and being able to see, but nope I have yet again have an oil pack in my eye.

While, in my recovery at home I had some time to soul search and truly think about my experiences at Bosma. When I graduate from Bosma I will not think about each individual class or the devices that I learned, but rather how Bosma and in particularly the people, have helped me grow as a person by giving me the tools to be successful. I will look back on the different relationships and interactions I have formed with individuals. Bosma gave me back ME! The people here have made me better and helped make my personal relationships stronger. Life isn’t something I can control. There are things in life we can control and there are others that we can’t. The individuals here have helped me accept this, now I’m not saying I accept it every day, because I’m not perfect.

Bosma is a company, but what makes that company successful are the people. The people who work at Bosma will help each and every one make changes, but they won’t let you go through those changes alone. Because, in all honesty, we are not alone in this.

Being here is a chapter in my life that I will never forget. Thank you for reading bits of my story It has been a pleasure writing. Who knows maybe I will create my own blog…To everyone out there, be open to change. You never know what will happen!

-Rach

I have the foundation that will allow me to move forward

It is that time already for me to wrap things up.  I have been training at Bosma since late July and I will finish my program next week.  While I am not done learning all I need to learn, and not done practicing all I need to practice, I have the foundation that will allow me to go home and keep moving forward.

When I first started I was not confident at all in my abilities and now I see practical ways to accomplish tasks I did not think I could do before.  Just this past weekend I was at a meeting of the National Federation of the Blind and was handed  a meeting agenda in braille and was able to slowly work my way through much of the content (there are still some contractions I am learning(.  It was a slow read, but I was able to do it.  In the beginning braille pages were just dots on a page and now the material means something.  As a side note, it also gave me something to read during parts of the meeting when I was not really paying much attention (yes, I know, I should pay attention in meetings but all of you know you do the same thing from time to time).

I also had a real life mobility challenge just yesterday which before coming to Bosma I would have never attempted.  I took the shuttle from Fort wayne to Indianapolis as I do most weekends, but since I was coming back on Monday rather than Sunday, my sister was not able to pick me up at our normal location.  Therefore, I chose an alternate drop-off for the shuttle where the driver drops me at Circle Center Mall in downtown Indy.  When the driver let me out, I asked him what street we were parked on and which way we were facing.  I then oriented myself to the street and navigated three blocks North and two blocks West to find the main Indy Go bus exchange.  I then located the bus I needed to get out to Bosma and rode it all the way to the training center.  I was a little nervous, but I just thought back to my training and had to put all the parts together in real life.  All went well and the trip was very smooth.  What a confidence builder.

My time staying in Indianapolis has been hard as I have been away from my wife most of each week, but the skills and confidence I have gained are already proving valuable.  The staff here is great and the program is what you make it.  For me, it has been well worth the investment.

-Eric

Immersed in Learning

Now that I am getting near the end of my program I have finally fallen into the routine of the days here.  Things are starting to get comfortable which means it is about time to be done.    It is with mixed feelings of both excitement and trepidation to look forward and not know exactly what is next. 

The classes here push my learning forward.  It also helps that I put in a lot of hours in the evening and early morning practicing what I have learned the prior day.  However, even if I did not practice I know that the next day I will have a course schedule that reminds me of what we did the prior day and challenges me with something new.  Once I get home, it will be up to me to drive my learning forward.

Additionally, once I get home the typical challenges of life will come into play and slow down my progress.  For better or worse, while I am at Bosma, I am immersed into learning.  I was so excited in the beginning to come to Bosma to start training but as I am getting close to the end I can truly say I am ready to get home.  I have the good fortune of getting home on the weekends but it is just not the same as being there day to day. Bosma is a fantastic immersion into learning and I have learned so much, but I also know just how much more I have to learn.  In the end, learning is up to me.

-Eric

An Adventure but Not One Alone

Good morning/ afternoon fellow reders. This has been one exciting week from having mild break downs over the silliest things to having that HOLY MOLY moment with sheer accomplishment directly afterwards.

Lets start from the beginning, so I have to have at least 2 more invasive eye surgeries with in the next 2 months. This does not make me happy at all. I have already had 6 surgeries 3 on each eye, so needless to say I am over the whole thing. Emotionally and physically  I am drained. I know this and can admit it, but at the same time I think about the what if’s and if I say no more to surgies will I be giving up the fight?  To me I compare most things in a competitive manner; for example win lose. I know that one should not take that approach to life. So I am slowly working on that about myself, in doing so I have silly break downs. My fiancé says I have more mood swings than a monkey swings from a tree. This makes me laugh because it’s very true. What we are going through makes us have to deal with emotions that I didn’t know were there or in all honesty want to acknowledge. So that was the beginning of the week and still happening.

Now yesterday, I made it down to the circle and into the Chase building blind folded with some help from my mobility instructor, Bill. This is where it gets interesting. We all know that things hardly go off smoothly when I want them too. Bill explains how to use the revolving door, check. I made it through no problems. To me things are looking great! I am pumped up about how well this lesson is going. I have the confidence to move on to the next task, escalators.

Bill goes over the instructions I’m listening and I am comprehending how to accomplish this task of making up the escalator. We walk up to the escalator I put the cane where its supposed to be, I hold on to the hand railing and Bill says go when you are ready and then it hits me the fear/ anxiety. I froze, counted to 10, took that first step, and to my surprise made it up the escalator. So going down should be the same right? Wrong, I took that first step going down, had that surge of anxiety where I thought I was going to fall, grabbed the railing with a death grip, and to my surprise in a loud voice said , “ HOLY Crap!!” I can only imagine what people thought if they saw e or heard me. I can’t believe in the middle of an office building I screamed that just because of my anxiety of the fear of  falling. By the time I got to the bottom of the escalator I was laughing, about the whole thing. I don’t know who says escalators are easy, but to me I no longer need to go to Kings Island or Six Flags for that adrenaline rush, I just have to go to the mall! However, though I had a high amount of anxiety once I made it down the escalator a couple times it slowly subsided and I had that instant sense of accomplishment. I love that feeling!

I have had my ups and downs this week, but at least I’m not allone in my adventure!

-Rach

The Road Traveled and the Road Ahead

As I sat down to write this week’s blog post I was not really sure where it would go.  I had a few ideas swirling around in my head and it turns out it ends- up being this week’s blog.  !  I Hope you can make sense of the string that ties this all together (I am not sure that I can).

I have now been at Bosma for two months.    During that time I have gone from the “new guy” to one of the more experienced clients here.  I have seen some of the clients who were here when I started finish their programs and I now have a target end date for my training.   While I feel I still have so much to do to get where I ultimately want to go, I now have a foundation of training I can go home and continue to work on.

When I am working with the computer, I still get stuck and frustrated each day, but it is no longer all day,  every day.  When reading documents in braille I get irritated when I don’t remember something or can’t feel the dots , but when my brain engages again and it all clicks I feel accomplishment that I could understand the word.  On a side note, I was talking with my sister earlier this week who teaches reading to elementary school children and she mentioned that I sound like I am “reading about like her kids” – I guess it makes sense that they call it “Grade 1” and “grade 2” braille (no she was not mocking me, she was very supportive – although for those who know my sister mocking would have been in the cards had this been a different topic).

On a different topic, a friend of mine called me a couple of weeks ago to tell me of an upcoming golf outing he would be playing in and wondered if I would be available to play with him .  A second friend called me just this week to ask me to play with him in that same golf outing.  Now, this is not really about my golf game since the fact that I can’t see the ball anymore really has not hurt my game (Yes – I was really that bad before), it is about real friends reaching out.  I won’t be available for this particular golf outing, but the fact that two guys called to let me know it was coming up and that they would both be willing to help me play was great.  It can be very isolating to loose ones vision, but your true friends are still there if you let them be.  A different friend of mine told me once that he had been feeling down on himself and finally decided that he needed to stop throwing himself his pity party since nobody ever showed up.  That really stuck with me and whenever I start sliding that way, I remind myself that communication goes both ways and I don’t need to be isolated when I have real friends out there.

To go along with the golf topic here, we had a speaker out to Bosma today from the Indiana Rehabilitation Hospital’s Adaptive Sports Program.  He opened my mind to all that could be accomplished recreationally even when you can’t see.  I have found I can learn to do most things I set my mind to. But he was talking about someone with a visual impairment who is an archer; at least to me, that sounds impressive.  He spoke about rock climbing, water skiing, and even sailing.  He spoke about Beep Ball (an adaptive form of baseball) and something called goal ball (which sounded to me like cross between team bowling and soccer with balls the size of basketballs with bells inside – confusing I know but I am sure the confusion is more in my description then in the actual game).  He ended with a brief discussion of blind golf , rock climbing, and martial arts.  I would have never imagined all this could be done before hearing about it today and while I am still not sure I can do all of these things with any level of skill, the issue I am sure won’t be my loss of vision.

Anyway. This was quite a rant this week on a variety of topics so I guess that means I am a real person writing and not some marketing genius.  I find it helpful to think about all that has happened both good and bad and see both the road traveled in addition to the road ahead.

-Eric

An Accessible Cowboy? What?

Why hello there everyone! I am pumped to tell you about my travels. I don’t know if I have told you yet, but this past weekend I traveled to New Jersey and rode in the Tour De Cure, it is a bike ride to raise money for the American Diabetes Association for research. IT was my last independent ride. My mother was my sighted guide and gave me verbal ques. We rode 63 miles in 5 hours. Let me tell you it was fun, yet complicated. I was a nervous wreck from the time they blow the: ”go” horn till I crossed that finish line.

Riding out there is nothing like riding my backcountry roads that I am familiar with. It wasn’t that I didn’t know where I was going, that was the trilling part, but rather the traffic coming from all sides. Oh my and the pedestrians. One would think that they would see cyclist coming at them and stop or slow down, but NO! Everyone thinks they own the rode. But, I have news for them, they don’t! Once, I got used to the traffic and random pedestrians popping out, I had to deal with all the debris from the hurricane that was still piled up. I would not have been able to accomplish the ride if it wasn’t for my mother and some of the other riders.  I wish I could say that I will be doing a ride like that independently again, but I know that it is no longer safe or me or others around me to do that. At least I get to ride a bicycle built for two, because two is always better than one!

Not only did I do the ride but also I got to go into New York City, Fifth Avenue, and Time Square. The number of people, is astonishing. I have never seen or been around that many people in my life and I have been to some pretty busy cities, but they don’t compare. I didn’t take my cane when I went into the city, because I was using a sighted guide. I loved every bit of that adventure because I had to adapt to my surroundings.

I have learned here that in certain situations to use the cane and in other to use a sighted guide. I chose to leave my cane at home not thinking about how having it may be helpful to my sighted guide. I don’t think we think about the ones we are with, who are helping us out, or about how they may be feeling or how being a sighted guide affects them. If I had my cane it would have warned others around us that I was visually impaired and that I was using a sighted guide. In warning others, I feel as though my sighted guide would have been less nervous about all the people because then the other around us may not have come so close to running us over.

Now don’t get me wrong, I also didn’t take my cane because I didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that I’m visually impaired and need just a little more personal space around me to make the quick decisions of my surroundings. I put all of that on my sighted guide, which was wrong. I feel like we all get this sense of wanting to be independent and not think about the things that people with sight take advantage of. I use to care less if people were walking head on and moved over at the last minute. Now it agitates me, because I don’t know they are there until the last minute and it is sometimes to late to move. Then there is a collision or I get crabby with my sighted guide and say “why didn’t you tell me about that?” I take for granted that my fiancé and family may not know how to handle situations or what exactly to tell me when we are out.

We will all have those days where we don’t want to be reminded of our disability, but I learned that communication is one of the main components that one needs in their tool box to be successful in enjoying life outside of the comfort zone. I also learned that my being visually impaired does not only affect me but also affects everyone in my life and my surroundings. So just remember that there are many exciting things one can do being blind or visually impaired it just takes a bit of adapting and communication.

PS. Ladies if you are ever in New York City in Time Square and the Naked Cowboy is playing his guitar, I recommend going and saying hi because he is very accessible and is all in… willing to let you touch him! Nothing like New York City having hands on activities!

-RACH

Knowledge is the Foundation

Today is my second conference.  What does that mean?  It means at the end of each 4 week period all the instructors hold a meeting with the client, that would be me, and my counselor from Vocational rehabilitation to discuss what was accomplished during the past month and what is planned for the future.  It is a good “level setting” discussion for all parties involved.  It is also a good “point in time review” that serves for me as a reminder as to how far I have come.

As I look at things day to day, I am frustrated by what I struggle with and don’t often take time to remember where I was only two months ago.  It is hard to sometimes see the big picture when I am still so far from where I want to ultimately be, but these conferences are a great reminder of all that has been accomplished along the path to my ultimate goals.

When I see all the task and learning oriented accomplishments spelled out, I can quickly be impressed with all I have done, but then (and this will be no big surprise to those who know me) I start beating myself up over all I still want to do.  I know in my head that training is to learn the skill and that once I leave here it will be up to me to keep practicing these skills daily to make sure they become ingrained in my head and hands. I also know that knowledge is the foundation that I will ultimately build my success upon.  So,  let’s bring on conference two and the rest of my training program.

-Eric