Five-Star Disability

Hi Folks!

You know you are a good writer but lousy organizer, when… you have a brief blog, ready to publish, yet must do revisions and edits! I change things, move things, redo things: from needle-thin points of succulent information to overlong descriptions grandeur: morphing terse sentences into bloated paragraphs of hot air!

Are you of the same cloth?

So, I bet you know that my vision is pretty crappy. I am legally blind, yet I do see fairly well. Here are some frustrations that I am venting…

• In the Dark: people, furniture, trees, cats; all tend to blur together into a blob, especially in low light, night.
• Out of Nowhere, pt.1: When I am riding my power chair or walking the walker, shoes may appear strolling independently, then I would spot the rest of the person. This is the phenomenon of similar colours blending together, startlingly so.
• Out of Nowhere, pt. 2: Street furniture is notorious for materializing out of the blue, nay more like grey, and smacking me silly. Benches, poles, steps, bus stop poles, fences, chains, barb-wire, potholes, did I mention curbs? Oh and objets d’art, that my wondering eyes gaze upon with awe, then I slam on the brakes to avoid a fire hydrant!
• I smashed into a bench at a skytrain station that bent my footrest, yes, I was going a tad too fast, but that bench was the same colour as the pavement… hmm
• Writi—: The simple, yet annoying, fact that I cannot read my own writing anymore, not the small scrawl that I used to attain my bachelors, not the double-spaced pandemic notes that I wrote in April, 2020. Nope, can’t read it! Luckily, there is an app that I use to read my writing, scanning it to blogs. (I must get into a habit! I have so much to say!)
• Watching ASL: I can do this activity perfectly, however, the longer it goes, the more tired I become. I often will close one eye to watch, the One-Eyed DeafBlind Pirate I’ve become! Haha… And, if the background is busy, I tend to miss information.

And now, finally, I come to the purpose of this blog! All the loquacious babble above was to highlight my vision (in)abilities. Thank you for your patience!

Two weeks ago, my son had a cavity capped, by a super children’s dentist! I took my kid using my power chair. We arrived within 2 minutes of his start time, 11:13 to the second!

Now, this kid has had many issues with dentists, he had to be anaesthetized a few times to do some tooth work. I decided that it was important for me to “sit” with him in the exam room.

This clinic, is top shelf for kids: it has TV’s, games, toys, fake trees, friendly faces. It had an open air set-up, with four or five dental chairs in the open, and two closed exam rooms. All in an inverted L shape, two offices at the end of the L.

So that day, two weeks ago, I followed my son, he was right in front of me, into the fake tree lined open air exam room, but I got stuck in the door! So, I had to back up, maneuver a bit, then got through.

When I looked around after this heroic struggle, my son had vanished!

So, nonchalantly, I motored down the hall, to the corner, hoping to spot my kid… I looked at each dental chair: too young, girl, girl, shoes too small, where is my kid? Parents were looking at me kindly weirdly… Like I was planning a kidnapping…

Then, I turned and noticed the rooms, and then saw my tall kid with his long hair, wearing dental sunglasses!

Phew!

It was a funny situation, because I, momentarily, lost my son due to my vision loss! Oh, I’m very sure that people were verbally telling me… “over there,” “your kid is over there,” “disco died in 1979,” “do you want fries that that punch?” and so forth… but I didn’t hear anything. I am Deaf.

So, that was a long read! But thank you for reading it!