Inspired by among others including @Beth Gallagher I decided to try my hand at writing a diary. The only diaries I’ve ever really kept before are the very detailed ones I’ve written while on vacation or our long journeys overseas simply because we often end up discussing what, where and when we did things and the diary soon clears up any doubts we might have had. So what should this diary contain - thoughts, everyday events, special occasions, narratives, the story of my life? I don’t really know yet but hopefully things will crystalize as I progress and think of things that might - or might not - interest other people. How often will I update - every day or just a few times a week? That will I suppose depend on a couple of factors: namely time and subject material. Anyway I’ll give it a try and see how things go. It’s Wednesday afternoon, I’m sitting at my desk in the computer room a cup of coffee and my cigarettes conveniently placed within reach. Yes I smoke, I started at the age of twelve way back in the early sixties when almost everyone around me including my immediate family seemed to smoke and it was the ”in” thing to do. Despite many attempts to quit over the years I have failed miserably and so I now belong to the minority of people who seem hellbent on shortening their lives with tobacco. However, after having conquered two severe illnesses that could have killed me I’ve reached the point where I feel I can allow myself this one last vice. But I digress. The rain that has been beating against the window since yesterday evening has now stopped and given way to a grey overcast autumn - or fall as you call it in the USA - day with the sun making vain attempts to penetrate the clouds. As I look out of the window I can see that the leaves on the trees are turning yellow and red and are starting to fall to create a colorful carpet on the grass. The last flowers are blooming in the garden and we’ve been busy tidying up, dividing and replanting the perennials that have got too big. The planters and pots have been emptied and all that remain are six large pots with strawberries that we moved from the strawberry bed. Later this month they’ll go into the greenhouse for the winter. Yes I do what I can in the garden with my limited sight and mobility. I shuffle around on my behind and look after my outdoor pots while my husband looks after the rest and does the heavy work in the flowerbeds. I’m also working on my photo yearbook. Every January I give each of my grand and great grandchildren a photobook of the past year’s family events. It’s expensive and takes time but it’s a labour of love and they all get excited when the time comes to look through them. I’ve been doing it for eight years and the number of books has increased steadily from two to over twenty as my family has grown and more and more grandchildren and now great grandchildren have been born or adopted. So that’s the first post in my diary. What the next post will contain and when I’ll be able to post it only time will tell. Anyway I hope you found something to interest you in my ramblings.
Friday morning and we have a busy day ahead of us. Our morning routine of getting me up and ready to meet the day is done and now we’re about to have morning coffee with a Danish pastry. Later on my cousin will be dropping in to leave a couple of books for me to read and borrow a few from me. They’re all about medieval English history which is a favorite subject for me and of course they’re in English. Nice to have someone with a common interest. This evening my best friend and her husband are coming over and we’ll be doing something that we’ve planned for a long time but had to postpone because of Covid. No it’s not a wife swapping party We’re having something that was popular back in the seventies and eighties - cheese fondue and then we’ll play canasta. Should be a fun day
Sounds like a fun evening, Bibbi. I used to play canasta with my cousins when we were teenagers, and of course I had a fondue pot in the 70s.
Keep it coming Bibbi. What newspaper do you read? Is there an online version? I'm interested in Sweden's perspective of world events and of the U.S. in particular.
@Ed Wilson I read two Swedish daily newspapets online. Dagens Nyheter (Daily News) and Svenska Dagbladet (Swedish Daily Paper). I’ve checked their websites but they don’t seem to have news in English. Swedish national radio has some news in English but how much is about Sweden’s perspective of the USA I couldn’t say. https://sverigesradio.se/radiosweden
”A blind amputee’s diary” Now hold on a second I hear some of you say, if she’s blind how does she use a computer and iPhone? So I guess an explanation is needed. How is blindness defined? Well, a blind person isn’t necessarily totally blind or have NLP - no light perception as it’s sometimes called which is used to describe the inability to see anything at all out of either eye. Complete blindness (NLP, or “no light perception”) is quite rare and happens when the connection between the eyes and brain is completely cut off. Either there is brain damage, the optic nerve has been severed, the eyes have been removed or the retinas have detached for example. This doesn’t mean that people in these cases see black. They see nothing. Actually only about 15% of blind people are totally blind. That means that 85% or the vast majority of blind people do have some form of residual vision. This could be the ability to distinguish between light and dark or see shapes or colors. Other people like me are legally blind. What does that mean? Well, according to the American Foundation for the Blind, legally blind is not the same as totally blind. Most people who are legally blind have some vision. To be considered legally blind, you would have to meet one of two criteria which are visual acuity (sharpness of vision) and visual field (the entire scope of what you can see without moving your eyes). These criteria are defined in the following way; Visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the eye you can see out of best (while wearing corrective glasses or contacts) Visual field of no more than 20 degrees Visual Acuity Visual acuity refers to how close a person needs to be to an object that's 20 feet away in order to see it in detail. Normal vision is measured as 20/20. If you had visual acuity of 20/80, it would mean that you would be able to see details from 20 feet away the same as a person with 20/20, or normal, vision could see from 80 feet away. A legally blind person with 20/200 vision (with the best corrective lenses) would need to be 20 feet from an object in order to see it as well as someone with 20/20 vision could see it from 200 feet away. Another way to look at it: If someone with 20/20 vision was standing next to a person who's legally blind, in order for the legally blind person to see an object that's 200 feet away as well as the person with the normal vision they would have to get as close as 20 feet to it. Visual Field If a person has a visual field of only 20 degrees, they can see things that are right in front of them without moving their eyes from side to side but they can't see anything on either side (peripheral vision). A visual field of 180 degrees is considered normal. A severely limited visual field sometimes is called tunnel vision and makes it nearly impossible to drive safely. I’m registered as legally blind because the visual field in my ”good” eye is 15 degrees. My other eye is completely blind - no shapes, colors, light or dark just nothing. To give you an idea of just how much I can see. We have a 50 inch TV. When I sit the normal distance from it about ten feet the only thing I see is the TV screen - nothing else around it. In order to see anything else I have to turn my head. It’s a bit like looking down a funnel if you want to try it for yourself So having explained blindness how do I and other blind people use computers? Thanks to modern technology there are many devices available nowadays that allow blind people to use computers and smartphones. The most obvious of course is voice recognition. If you’re a Mac user you’ll have met Siri but there are similar applications if you use a PC or android phone. With Siri I can open and close programs and applications, surf the web, dictate e-mails, write documents and fill in spreadsheets. As I still have a little sight remaining I can see the computer and smartphone screens and use the keyboards. If text is too small then I use the built in magnifier which of course you all know about. Then there is text to voice software that translates written text to speech. These are the things I use but howabout someone who is totally blind? I have a close friend who lost both eyes to cancer as a child leaving her totally blind and she has other devices that allow her to use the computer. First off of course like me she uses voice recognition software to translate speech to text and vice versa. She also has a braille keyboard, a braille printer and two devices called refreshable braille displays one for her computer and one for her iphone. As you know braille is what blind people use to read and each braille cell consists of six points. Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a combination of one or more points in each cell. The refreshable display has a row of cells and when she reads text that’on the screen pins pop up in each cell to form the letters in braille. When she’s read them then she resets the display and the next set of letters pops up. The one she uses with her iPhone also has the traditional keys for writing in braille which then converts into text. Obviously this wouldn’t work for me ss i have prosthetic arms. The advent of 3d printers has added another dimension to things. Some hospitals are now using them to print models of fetuses from ultrasound scans so that blind moms to be can ”see” what their baby looks like during pregnancy. So that’s just a few of the things that we blind people have to help us use computers and smartphones. Refreshable braille display
Today my dear friend @Beth Gallagher starts her second week of radiation treatment. I will be keeping her in my thoughts and send positive vibes, hugs and all the love I can
Today we made a tough decision. I had my regular checkup with my eye doctor a couple of weeks ago. The tests showed that I have glaucoma and that my field of vision in my good eye has gotten smaller over the last year. I hadn’t really noticed the change because I’ve had limited vision most of my life and the change is slow and gradual. It will have to be monitored closely as any further loss of vision leading to blindness in that eye would leave me totally dependent on other people as I would no longer be able to use my prosthetic arms. I’ve been prescribed eyedrops which I’ll probably have to take for the rest of my life. If the drops don’t help then I may need surgery to prevent me going completely blind. I’ve also had a dull throbbing pain in my blind eye for many years which causes continuous discomfort. As there is no chance of me ever regaining any sight in that eye I’ve decided after long discussions at home with my husband to have sugery to have that eye enucleated and replaced with a prosthetic eye. Now we’re waiting for the hospital to book me time for the surgery.
I have glaucoma in my left eye and my eye doctor prescribed latanoprost eye drops... one drop per day. He checks the efficacy of the drops by doing a pressure test on the eye, and the drops are effective. He will then schedule a field of vision test, but I postponed the last one for some time later because covid has been spiking up again. Good luck.
Bibbi--I dread the surgery for you but if the blind eye is causing you pain then I think you're making the right choice. I hope the eye drops will help your good eye. Let us know when the surgery is booked.
@Bibbi Wright I truly do not understand why some people have so much pain and misery dumped on them. I do hope and pray this helps you maintain some vision without pain at least. Um is inappropriate for me to ask about and eye transplant?