Other than the hearing issue, mobility has been going well. I
am able to find buildings/stores when given an address, and slowly find my way out of parking lots
when I have drifted into them. When I get lost in a parking lot, I usually
figure that out after hitting a car with my cane and luckily no car alarms have
gone off yet, I stop where I am and
listen for the traffic. I try to locate where my traffic is, then once I have found
it I try to figure out which side of me the traffic should be one. It helps
when one street is a two-way and another is a one-way. It makes it easier to
tell them apart. Once I have figured that out I walk towards the street I want
to find the sidewalk again. Once I find the sidewalk, I stop and listen for
traffic again to make sure I'm going the right direction. It is all about
locating the sounds of traffic and keeping it on the right side of you depending
which way you want to go.
You really have to learn to trust your hearing and tune into
what you are surrounded by. Also, you have to tune in on what your cane is
going over so you know when you need to watch for a hole, a step, or a crack in
the side walk. You want to be in tune so when you do hit something you have a
quick reaction time, just in case it is a tree and you don't walk into it. You
also learn to feel the difference in the pavement, asphalt, and brick; which
helps you know if you went into a different area that you might not want to be.
You also feel for the bumps at the corner of an intersection, which is not
every where so we can't rely on that to help us know that we need to stop.
Those yellow bumps are called truncated
domes.
My instructor wanted to get
a better idea of what it is like to having a hearing problem as well as being
vision impaired so he wore shop headphones and shades around the block. It was
more deafening compared to me but it gave him an idea that it is hard to locate
where sounds are coming from. When loud sounds go off around me, especially
fire trucks, EMTs and police, it makes me cringe and get disoriented and I lose
my balance some. The sound is such a high pitch and it is amplified in my ears from
my hearing aids compared to people with normal hearing. He learned that it is a
lot tougher than just having the blindness itself. Two students tried it as
well so they could understand better. They said it was hard and gave me props for
going out there and doing it. It is not easy, it can be done but it is tough
and frustrating. I know that in some weather conditions, such as snow, I will
have to figure out another route to get somewhere when my vision gets worse
because everything is muffled from the snow. I can also use a card that says
that I'm vision and hearing impaired and that I need help crossing the street
to hold up. I don't know if I will ever bring myself to use that, just makes me
feel vulnerable.
Right now, we are doing an
experiment to see if wearing my shades where causing my migraines. We are
thinking that I am straining to hear too much. I didn't realize how much I
relied on my vision to hear until I put the shades on. I struggle to hear some
of my instructors and when I'm on mobility I really concentrate and strain to
hearing the sounds around me. I am doing the last two weeks of the term without
my shades to see if it is the cause. I am working on low vision techniques such
as scanning intersections and what to watch for in certain situations. I am
going to do an independent route to a coffee place under shades since that was
one of my goals to have done before the end of the term.
That is it for now! The
term ends on the 14th, but will be completing another term starting the first
week of April.
These are pictures of me under shades but not during mobility. We were teaching my cousins and friend how to use the cane under shades and I was showing them what I look like.
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