After a day of just being completely overwhelmed, my prayer was that my second and third day would not be so much of the same. Unfortunately it was. I literally felt like I was rushing from one class to another, with little time to breathe.

I did not wake up as early on this morning, November 14th, as I had the morning previously. I did sleep well, but needed more nights of that same to feel normal. Breakfast at 7:30am, back up to my room at 8:15am, classes begin at 9am. Thus far an escort person has come over from the training center to get me.

My schedule was this:

9am Clc, Communications

9:45 SDS, which I believe that I met with my case manager again on this morning.

10:30 Break, where students have the opportunity to get something to drink, relax for a few minutes. I didn’t of course get to do that, on this morning. 15 minutes is not nearly enough time to do anything.

10:45am IL, Independent Living. This was an interesting class; as usual they had a questionnaire to fill out. Many questions like, can I do this, or that. How am I at cooking, at cleaning. My instructor for this class is a very interesting lady. I am a little caught between being a student or being a peer, it’s a strange position to be in. I might explain a little bet later. I had IL for two periods back to back.

12:15 to 1:00 Lunch. We all come back from the training building back to the residential building. Again something that is not long enough. For the past two days, I drop puppy off in my room and then go down to lunch. But then if I am running late in getting back to this building, I run late all through lunch. Lunch is very similar to breakfast and dinner, going through a line, picking what you would like to eat from the menu, and then eating. Lunch is usually the busiest time in the cafeteria, thus the noisiest.

1:05pm Technology

1:50 to 2:30pm is Mobility. On this particular day, the O&M instructor showed me around the training building a little. I now understand that the lower level of the building is in the shape of a U, sort of wide and fat U. We also worked on getting me comfortable with the walk to and from the training to residents building. On this particular day, I had my puppy. My O&M instructor is also from Texas, and we know many of the same people and have both knowledge of the Texas School for the Blind facility.

Like I said, it seemed like all I was doing all day was running from one class to another. It didn’t help that my stomach was bothering me off and on. Other noteworthy events, is that at lunch on this particular day, they turned on the exhaust fan for the kitchen in the cafeteria. It filled the room where all of the students eat with smoke. Well it was cold outside, and with the dry conditions it sparked an asthma attack. I dosed myself up in order to prevent one, but when I stepped outside into the cold air, I started coughing again. So more meds were in order. This then meant that I gave myself all the doses I could on that day. If I had another asthma attack, I would then need to go to the ER. The asthma attack and the violent coughing, strained my vocal cords, so I could not talk very loud. It was sort of interesting because when I went to tech, my instructor is also deafblind, and because of my strained voice, he had a hard time hearing me. After the technology class, I met with the nurse, and told her what had happened. I wasn’t in danger but wanted to let them know what had been done, what I took and that what needed to be done after that. We agreed that I would not spend alot of time outside if it was super cold. Super cold like below 45 degrees. This conversation was done during my O&M class, but that instructor was pulled in for the conversation.

Later on that night after dinner, the residents who had signed up for this trip went to 16 Handles; I think that is what it was called. It’s a frozen yogurt shop, where you can choose 16 different flavors of frozen yogurt, and then put any topping that you want on. There were about 6 or 7 students that went, with 3 staff. The dorm staff tries hard to pair up staff with people who need help or guiding. So the flavors I chose were peanut butter, Carmel, and chocolate for the yogurt part. For the toppings, I chose M&M’s, chocolate sprinkles, crushed Oreo’s, chocolate chips and then there was one more, but I can’t remember what it was. I will say it was a very delicious dessert, but well well worth it. They charge 55cents per ounces for the yogurt and toppings. I won’t say how much I spent. But I made it through my first two days, so I thought I deserved a treat.

Friday began much like the last two days; the difference is that, my mental and emotional strength was not looking forward to the weekend. Still on this day time flew by.

My scheduled looked like this:

9:00am IL, Independent Living, this time with a different instructor, this instructor is actually deafblind herself. Unfortunately I have a hard time understanding her speech, as she has an accent, from the south, and she talks very fast. Again more questions.

I will add here that it seemed like all I had been doing for the last 3 days was telling people about me, like a continuous interview, because that is exactly what I was doing.

9:45am SDS, and yet again I met with my case manager to fill out some paper work from my VR, Vocational rehab counselor. I haven’t as of yet had a SDS free, to relax and to work on what I want. Hopefully that will change in the future.

10:30 Break, and just like the SDS, I haven’t actually had a break. I am by no means complaining, but during classes it seems as there is no time to hardly breathe.

10:45am Audiologist. I met with the audi in house here at HK. She had met with me during the summer when we were here for my tour. I have heard nothing bad about this audi, she is a miracle worker in the respects of hearing aids. We took a look at all of the equipment I brought with me. She cleaned my current aids, and I brought to her attention a few concerns. She also changed the tubing on my aids too. At one point she mentioned that she recommended that I go for a Cochlear Implant evaluation. In the moment of her talking to me about this, I tried very hard to rationalize that my hearing was not truly that bad, it can’t be that bad. But I also told her all of the issues of concentration, of how much I work to hear voices, and that sometimes it can be overwhelming. I really like her, and am looking forward to this while here.

11:35am Low Vision, unfortunately the low vision specialist and the eye doctor were out on this day. So this would need to be rescheduled.

12:15pm Lunch

I will also mention here that I had been cleared from the O&M instructor to walk from the dorm building to the training building, but on my way back to classes in the afternoon, after lunch. I got lost. No I didn’t have puppy, I was running late and didn’t have time to go back to my room and get her. So I got lost on a fairly straight path. I am not sure where I went wrong, I knew that I was close to the building, but just could not find the stairs. After a while of looking, a staff person came to my rescue, and helped me find the stairs and the building. It’s a strange way of getting into the building anyways.

1:05pm technology. On this day during tech, the instructor brought in his alarm that he uses with the IPhone to wake him up in the morning. It’s a base that your IPhone sits on, once the alarm on the IPhone starts going off, vibrating, the device then will make the bed shaker go off. A bed Shaker is something you put under your pillow or your mattress, when the alarm goes off, the shaker will vibrate, to wake you up. Because I can’t hear my alarm in the mornings because my hearing aids are out, I need this. So he showed me what he used. I want one but don’t have the additional $70 to purchase it. Right now the HK is letting me borrow an alarm that has a bed shaker; it’s not a talking clock though, so I can’t set the alarm independently. The awesome thing about this one is that it uses the IPhone clock without buying a whole separate device.

1:50 to 2:30pm CLC, communications. On this day we worked on more sign language. I learned the signs for each of the classes, for the dorm building, for an office and a room, for staff, for a few countries. When we were going through the signs, my instructor was very impressed that I knew so many already, and that I had a true talent for remembering them. I am not sure about that remembering part, but it’s only out of necessity that I have learned them. I was going to send her the word lists, from our two tutors, and sort of review some of the mistakes we had picked up from different tutors.

2:30 Return back to the dorm. As I already mentioned the day flew by, and I was dreading Being here for the whole weekend. So grudgingly I went back to the dorm to begin the weekend.

The sad part of the day was that one of the ladies that I had gotten close to was leaving on this day. She thought that she might come back in the spring for more training.

There were no activities planned for going off campus this night, so we were all stuck here in the dorm. It had been both an exhausting day and week.

I survived my first 3 days. More to come on the weekend…