Somedays Are Tough

No-one ever said going blind was easy. The actual process could possibly be described as easy. Poof one minute you can see, the next the world is black or a blurred fog. Tough, live with it as my wife said to me the other day.

The hard part is the mental but. I still want to see. I'd give almost anything to see again. Almost anything? You may ask.

Yes almost. Money would go, house, wife even. But not my dog. The line would even hold true if you would say that I were to die. If it were my life or my dogs life. I would surrender myself to my fate to save her.

Why? My dog has been with me for eighteen years now. A German Shepherd. She is of good Czech breeding lines, kennel name Hariska Intrigue, but for all those 18 years I have called her Polly.

A few months ago I noticed a wobble of her back legs as she walked, a slight scuff of the ground by her claws. That moment filled me with cold dread. She was showing the first signs of aging, the first mark that time was catching up with us.

Today she cannot really get up from her bed. She is bent like a birthday card trying to stand. She can just go to the bathroom, only just, without falling. Some days are tough but I know very soon I have to make a really hard decision.

I cannot go in her stead. I want to, I really want to.

Yesterday I fed her. When she had finished she picked up her steel food bowl and flung it across the room. She used to do that as a puppy. As if to say, "I am finished." Perhaps in her way that is what she was telling me yesterday. "I am finished. Time to go."

Scientists Goal - End Blindness by 2020

The Gavin Herbert Center is set to open at UC Irvine in Orange County, California in the summer of 2013.

The aim of the center is to create a place where academics, patients and industries aimed at treating blindness can come together in a drive to end blindness by the year 2020.

Read a great article click here to read article

Wheelchair! GET OUT ' THE WAY!

Have you ever noticed a distinct hierarchy of disability?

I mean.

I was at the doctors office the other day. I have my usual problem of a receptionist who insists that by shouting and thrusting a pen into my right hand (I am left handed) that miraculously I will be able to see to sign in on their sign in sheet.

Sitting there I hear the buzz of an electric wheelchair in the waiting room and they are greeted with "How are you?" "I'm sorry to hear that. Let me help you with this." The receptionist hands down a pen and the sign in sheet and the happy person in the wheelchair laps up the attention.

Now this in a single case may be just the people know each other ssocially or are old friends. But it appears everywhere.

People in wheelchairs race around stores, up and down the sidewalk or worse still the street. Disregard the rules of the road. "Get out of my way! I am in a wheelchair" Their war cry.

Blind people? Well you hardly see those about. When you do we tap our way around invisible to all and sundry who push us and seem to give us an eye test. "Just how close can I get before he flinches?"

Then the deaf? What can we say about the deaf? Anything we want really. They are DEAF!

Yes there is a real hierarchy of disability.

Free Parks Pass

This week I went to one of our local National Parks. Being in California we have lots to choose from, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Death Valley and the queen of them all, in my opinion, Yosemite. Then we have small parks too,.

I have always been happy to buy a yearly pass for the parks. They are well worth it at less than $100 so five or moere visits to any parks make the annual pass profitable.

Well this time, my wife pointed out to the gate keeper that we have a disabled parking badge. The gate keeper asked if it was temporary or permanent. On hearing it was permanent they directed us to the Tourist Center.

There one of the park rangers was very helpful. He filled in a form for me and gave me a FREE pass to all National Parks in the US. This also covers entrance to national monuments and Federal Reserves.

So if you like to visit places. Consider asking Federal Officers if you are elligible for a FREE Parks Pass.

It is not often that our disabililties are recognized and we can receive some benefit from the Federal Government.

 

 

The General Sherman Tree

 

Sequoia National Park California USA