Five-Star Disability

Hi folks…

I have so much to learn about ataxia and its many fun side effects.

I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture, heck, I don’t even let my kids paint!  It is just that I continuously learning new things in relation to this wonderful dance that I am involuntarily waltzing to.

Take, for example, I just came to the fruition that my ataxia is not just the quirky two-step shuffle, the falling down groovy-ness, and the occasional dropped fork.  It is a great deal more and many levels seem to exist…

I have always thought that my thinking processes were ataxia-free. I just realized that, to my great error, my thinking processes are very much free… for all battle, and much so, dirtier even.

My thoughts get jumbled, sometimes incoherent, most often I have a permanent nonplus expression plastered on my mug, my face, not my coffee cup!

More times than not, I get things mixed up, sometimes royally, others not.  Offhand, I can’t think of any acute example.

I am, first, DeafBlind with strong ASL (Sign Language) skills.  I mentioned this before in an other article that I feel that my ability to sign has benefited me by allowing my ataxia of my hands to slowly creeping up.

Another positive, I have pretty good recall for transit knowledge.  Give me a day or two, and I can get from my place to yours without an issue.  I do thank some law that says all stop announcements must be visual as well as auditory.

Another mental challenge is get to the point in the simplest form.  This sometimes messes me up and I go for long discussions when shorts ones are best.

And, this is the funny one, I would start to laugh for no apparent reason, in public, other than recalling some funny thing that happened just recently!  Chuckle!  Its quite disconcerting to, while zooming on the bus from my house to yours, start to laugh at some funny jape I said to my wife, after I dropped my fork!

Ahh… You  get the picture!  You can’t have it, but you do understand!