Feelings After Watching a Documentary on the Blindness Rehabilitation Center

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I got a subscription to see past episodes of Dutch television programs mostly so that I could see a documentary series called Five Days Inside. It’s where three presenters rotate to visit mostly health care settings or other institutions that are not commonly shown to the general public. The episode of four weeks ago was about the blindness rehabilitation center I attended in 2005. I actually still recognized some of the staff talking to the presenter from when I went there.

Watching it had me very emotional. I don’t know why. I guess because most of the clients who were featured, some roughly my age when I attended the program, are so optimistic about their future despite sometimes having recently lost their vision. When I attended the program, I often felt way ahead of these people and way behind of them at the same time. After all, I had pretty good Braille reading skills. My reading speed at the start was more than twice that which is the ultimate goal of the rehabilitation program for adults. As I learned today while watching the episode, some people don’t even have the tactile ability to ever learn Braille. Most will only be able to use Braille for simple labeling, not for reading books, like I do.

On the other hand, I never learnd to cook. Not in those four months in the center or the eighteen months in an independence training home that followed. It wasn’t for lack of teaching, but I couldn’t manage these tasks. Or even simpler tasks such as putting peanut butter on bread.

Today, I talked to my CPN from the mental health agency. We were talking about my skills or lack thereof. She seems to blame my parents for not having taught me properly. I understand. Then again, with my having had a meltdown each time my parents tried to make me learn new practical skills, it’s only understandable that they gave up. My CPN acknowledged this is a common autistic trait. My parents would say I’m not autistic, just stubborn. Apparently I decided from as early as age seven on that I would never learn practical skills because I couldn’t do them visually. Or maybe because I thought I was too smart for them. I don’t know what my father’s theory boiled down to exactly.

And now I see these blind or partially sighted people who are planning on working or going to college. I don’t know how I feel towards them. On the one hand, I feel envy. I wish I could cook tuna macaroni or zucchini soup. I wish I could ride the bus on my own, then go into town to buy raisin rolls. I wish six months of training could teach me the skills to live independently and go to college or work.

Then on the other hand, I feel an enormous sense of relief. I feel relieved that somehow my support coordinator was able to convince a long-term care funding lawyer that it’s at least partly due to blindness that I can’t.

PoCoLo

The Summer After High School

Posted on by Astrid

It is still incredibly hot here. That is, it should be a lot cooler than it was yesterday. I’m not feeling it though. Probably my room, which is at the front of the house, keeps the heat.

I want to write, but I don’t know what about. For this reason, I looked up writing prompts for the month of June on Google. A prompt I liked is to share about the summer after you graduated high school.

This was in 2005. Man, can you believe it’s already been fourteen years? I remember finding these odd lists of things that mean you live in 2005, such as “You have lost touch with old friends simply because they don’t have an E-mail address”. E-mail is way outdated now. However, I think WordPress already existed, though I didn’t have an account. But I digress.

I graduated from high school on June 24, 2005. Two weeks prior, I had finished the assessment week at the country’s residential rehabilitation center for the blind and had been advised to attend their basic training program. It was expected that I couldn’t start until October.

However, in early August, I received a phone call telling me I could start on August 22. So that’s where I spent the last few weeks of the summer holiday and the rest of the year.

The summer of 2005 was also the summer I had a ton of health worries. Most of them were just health anxiety, but one of these scares did get me sent to a neurologist for suspected shunt malfunction. That was when I first learned about the possible impact of my hydrocephalus on my life. I never had a shunt malfunction *knock on wood*.

The summer of 2005, essentially, was the time I left my parental home and entered the care system. Even though I was supposed to get independence training, my father predicted I would never leave the care system. He was right, but so what?

Today, I had a meeting with the blindness agency which the rehabilitation center is part of to see if I can live with them. I won’t, because their living facilities are all over an hour’s drive from my husband. This meeting did remind me of how I entered the care system fourteen years ago with the aim of doing training for a year (at the center and an independence training home) and then leaving for Nijmegen to live completely independently. It didn’t work out. The disparity between this overly-normal, independent self, the one who is married now and doesn’t need help, and the multiply-disabled self, is still hard to deal with.

Independence Training: My Journey Through Rehabilitation Programs #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day nine in the #AtoZChallenge. I wasn’t sure what to write about till literally minutes ago. My support coordinator was in touch with the long-term care funding agency today. I still can’t disclose details, but it brought back memories of all the rehabilitation and training programs I’ve been in. Let me share.

I didn’t get a lot in the way of independence training while at the school for the blind, but I got some. It wasn’t efffective though. I don’t know why, but part of the reason was probably my parents constantly arguing with the school on what was important for me to learn. Another reason was my struggle with generalizing skills I’d learned at school into other settings. Once I went to mainstream secondary school, I didn’t get any independence training at all. I was pretty bad at life skills by the time I graduated high school.

I decided not to go straight to university after high school. Instead, I chose to go into the country’s only residential rehabilitation center for the blind’s basic program. I learned some skills, but still had trouble making use of them in the real world.

The same happened when I went into an independence training home. At first, I thought highly of myself and wanted to do things independently I really couldn’t. My plan was to get training for eight months and then leave for university. Those eight months became eighteen and then I was basically made to go to university.

I tried a ton of independence training while hospitalized on the psych unit too. It didn’t work. Whenever I tried to do something independently, such as clean or travel using my white cane, I struggled greatly. I didn’t fully realize this, not even at the long-term care assessment last January, but I really overestimated myself. My husband can attest to that. He’s had to get me out of trouble many times.

Why I struggle so much, no-one has been fully able to figure out. It’s probably a combination of my multiple disabilities (blindness and cerebral palsy) and my emotionally low functioning level.

It’s been recommended that I get more independence training. Maybe, after I complete dialectical behavior therapy for my emotion regulation issues, I’ll not feel as frustrated with myself and be more able to learn. I don’t think this is going to solve the problem though, since doing something with someone present, isn’t the same as doing something on your own.