Back to Moorfields

Hi Everyone,
I am sorry its taken me a few days to let you in on how the appointment at the hospital went but it seems to have taken me longer to recover than usual.
On Thursday last week, I had to be at Moorfields for 9am, my partner and I went to catch the 7.50 train from Arlesey into Finsbury Park, only to find that the train before had been cancelled and the next train, our train, had been reduced from 12 coaches to 8, you can imagine the fighting to get on that train, with standing room only, my partner and I got on the last carriage and were wedged at the back. It was packed with commuters, there was this young guy, who thought his view of the EU was wayyyy more important than anyone else's and proceeded to announce his views across the carriage. He then decided that everyone needed to know how much money he and his wife earn, how much his mortgage (he has a endowment mortgage don't you know!) is, how much it costs to put his kid into childcare, he then started to slag his friends down because they earn more money but pay less tax. I looked down on this suited and booted little man, and was tempted to ask him if he had enjoyed his weekend out with his friends, how it felt to turn on the tap this morning and get clean water to brush his teeth, did you make your bed with your lovely clean sheets and fluffy pillows before you left your house this morning and had your wife drop you off at the station so you didn't get wet before she dashed off to drop your well fed and loved sprog at nursery and then dashing off herself to her own job, you silly little prick, What's the matter with people? why cant they be grateful for what they have? Bet the little shit doesn't wana trade places with the man sitting at the bottom of the steps at old street station in the pouring rain, with all his possessions in a carrier bag and a smelly old sleeping bag wrapped around him!
Luckily we came into Finsbury Park, just as I was clearing my throat to explode at this twat sitting....oh yeah that's another thing, men don't get up for women anymore, I remember going to Great Ormond Street hospital to visit my sister with my mum when I was little, and males, and I say males, because it was any age male, would get up and offer my mum a seat, now they look you up and down and you can almost see some of them thinking, I paid for this seat, I gonna sit in it!!
Oh dear, I am off again! So my partner grabs my hand and helps me off the train, the connecting train was packed so we waited the whole four minutes for the next one, which was also packed but we squeezed on. four stops to Old Street and follow the green line, there is a green line that starts in old street station and goes all the way to Moorfields. As we walked along the green line, I noticed the landscape had changed since I was last there, I didn't get a opportunity to take a photo but a magnificent new building has gone up, its all shiny and considering the small space, its massive, I don't know if this is the actual building, but it looks very similar to the one below.

There is also a coffee shop and a Sainsbury along that road that I never noticed before!
Once in the hospital we found department 11 and checked in, there wasn't may people about, so we got comfy expecting a long wait. In the time I had nipped to the loo, I had been called to see the nurse, never mind, the nurse had waited for me! Pressures checked, eye test done, diluting drops and anaesthetic drops all given and I was back out in the waiting room by 9.10, it takes about 15 minutes for eyes to dilate fully, so my partner went off in search of a coffee and I got comfy once again. Slowly patients and staff started to trickle through with stories on how bad they found the travelling to the hospital was, apparently several tube stations had been shut due to flooding and this was causing chaos, so it seemed my journey hadn't been as bad as some peoples. As I am earwigging my partner returns with his coffee, just as I am called to have a scan. For the first time I manage to sit perfectly still and I didn't even blink when the nurse said 'no blinking please'.  Back to the waiting room, by backside had barely touched the seat when I was called to see the consultant. I met a new consultant and my own consultant Mr Andrews was there too. They explained that there had been a change in the vision of my good eye, and that as time goes on I will find that there will be small changes and there will be big changes to my sight, it will continue to get worse and I will make changes to my life style to adapt to that. They also said that they found 'something' in the good eye, along with the something there is a some fluid again, they chatted between themselves about treatment and came to the decision that any treatment is far too risky, if I lose sight in my good eye, well, that's it basically, my vision will be completely poo, so they decided to leave me as I am because I am doing 'A great job' the consultants words not mine! I have the reassurance that I can walk into the clinic at anytime and been seen, he hopes he doesn't see me in the clinic for a long time, but when the time comes they will support and do everything they can for me.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is that! 
So, with white stick and sunglasses on, my return ticket in the back pocket of my jeans, I collected my partner and we made our way home. This is where things get frustrating, I was in and out of that appointment in less than an hour, but I felt exhausted, when we got off the tube at Finsbury Park and got on the train towards Peterborough I fell asleep, when we got off at Arlesey, we walked the short distance home, my partner drove us to go and vote, when we got back I fell asleep again, I slept on and off all day, my youngest Daughter made our tea, I literally couldn't keep my eyes open, so I went to bed at about 7pm and slept well.
I woke with all intentions of going into work on Friday morning, but I noticed that the dilation in my bad eye hadn't gone down properly, and my balance was still out. so I stayed home, and guess what...slept, I felt groggy all day, yesterday, Saturday, I took Ralph for a long walk, but again I was so tired when I got back, I find it very annoying that I get so tired when I do things that are out of my usual routine. Especially as there is nothing I can do about it, all that happened at the hospital was they told me something I already knew, so it wasn't particularly stressful.
I have, however, now that it has been reinforced by a professional, realise that it is time I started looking more, making memories, and although it would be lovely just to stop doing all the things we have to do, that's not a option, so all I need to do is shift life around a little and turn the things I have to do into good experiences making the nice things even better, right?
So last night, after the massive storm I went out into the garden to put the bin out, on the way back across the lawn, something caught my eye, when I stopped and looked around I realised that my garden has some beautiful flowers growing that I hadn't noticed before, I have no idea what they are! Also my veggie plot has gone mad, I am thinking that when the time comes and I am no longer able to work at the school, perhaps, more as a hobby, I could grow veg and have a little market stall!!!

Take a look at my flowers, they are a bit battered by the rain! I even have a Lily in the pond!

Visual Memory

Visual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the Encoding....when items of use or interest are allowed to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain (memory), Storage....The process of placing newly acquired information into memory, and Retrieval....the mental process of retrieval of information from the past, of the neural representations.
That's the science bit, I could go on with all the long names and complicated jargon, but frankly, its a bit boring!
In terms I understand, visual memory is a form of memory which presents some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experiences. so the objects, places, animals or people we see are placed in visual memory into the brain as a mental image.
The visual memory retains the mental images and we retrieve, through our memory, a mental image of the original object, place, animal or person.
So, we use our eyes to see, but it is our brain that translates this information to make a image, if one or both are damaged, brain or eyes, the information is either unable to be translated into a image or, as it is for me, the eyes see or think they see a image, the visual memory kicks in and produces a image as near as it can to what my brain thinks I am seeing- complicated? confused?
Well, there's this fella called Dr Michael Prouix, he is one clever dude, and has done masses of research into all this brain and cognitive development stuff. One of these studies showed that people who are born blind have way more accurate memories than your average Joe with sight.
People with no visual experience at all had the best verbal and memory skills. This test was given to folks with sight, folks with late onset blindness and those born blind, results showed that blind people remember more words and were less likely to create false words of the words they had heard! The research also showed that we often recall words related to those we hear- so hearing the words chimney, cigar and fire for example, could trigger a false memory of the word smoke!
If someone said the word flower to you, your visual memory will produce a bank of images related to flowers, my visual memory will produce a image of the last flower I saw, and I have to think very hard for my brain to produce a image of any other flower.
Blind people also avoid unrelated words, so a fire would be a fire, not smoke or ash or heat, just fire.
There is also some sort of research to help understand the psychology of blindness. This is something that interests me greatly as I would love to explain why I can manage to do so much when my sight is so bad.
For a long time I worried that there was something wrong with my memory, it just doesn't seem to work like it used to, now I understand that it is working, just in a different way.
A good friend of mine recently told me that another friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in a long time had lost a lot of weight. When I saw her a few weeks later, she looked exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her. I felt terrible because I couldn't say, ohhh you look great, because I didn't understand why I wasn't seeing this weight loss. Everyone was saying how fab she looked, I felt frightened and frustrated, and it bothered me for a long while. NOW I understand that the image I have of her within my visual memory was retrieved and because my sight so awful, all I could do was connect the image in my memory to the voice I was hearing and remembered. There are also three ladies at work who are pregnant, all due around the same time, people keep saying, ohhh look at their beautiful bumps, I just don't see it, however one of the lovely ladies I worked with when she had her first baby, my memory is connecting my image of her from her first pregnancy so she looks pregnant!
This brain and memory thing is amazing if a little scary, as I have said before, we take for granted how very complex and clever our brains really are,  how we seem to naturally adapt to the loss of one of our senses....bet you are also pleased I decided to waffle on tonight and I don't suppose I have made any sense at all!! Time for bed, I have worn myself out with all this thinking. speak soon x

Little things

Hello everyone,
Its here! The week I've been waiting for! On Thursday I have a appointment at Moorfields hospital London. I have to be there for 9am, so its going to mean a very early start. I think I am looking at the 7.50 train into Finsbury Park, hop on another train to Old Street, which should get me at the hospital in time for a quick cuppa first, and i have been told to expect to be there all day. This is going to mean voting at 7am as there is no way I'll be able to manage it when I get back, I think I am going to give weight watchers a miss too, as the WW team have to move to a different building to make way for voters in the village hall, I think WW will be held in the old youth club building and I haven't been in there for years, I remember it being quite dark in there though so I will avoid it, of course the other reason for skipping WW is that last week seemed to be a week of celebration...we celebrated my eldest Daughters last A-Level exam...with a Chinese take away, then we celebrated the same daughter being excepted into the LRA (London Retail Academy) for September.... with chocolate, then we celebrated her getting a part time job....with a Indian take away, chocolate, cider and crisps!! This celebrating with food needs to stop! I wonder if it would have the same effect if I celebrated an occasion with a nice long walk?
Funny thing happened Friday afternoon, so remember wayyy back I told you that there had been a mix up with my referral and my doctors had referred me as a new patient to Bedford hospital? Well that was on 12th January.... Friday the 17th June, a good 6 months later, I received a phone call from Bedford Hospital telling me that they are terribly sorry but they just found my referral letter tucked in some other paperwork, they didn't know how it got there, but it seems I have been over looked, no poop Sherlock! Also did I think I still needed to be sent an appointment!!!!!!!. Of course in the meantime I had been referred to Moorfields as I should have been in the first place and received a appointment, so I confidently told the poor lady on the end of the phone how disgusted I was, Just supposing I had something terrible wrong with me, I might have wasted 6 months of precious time, she was very apologetic, and I might have been a little firm, but really? so, NO I don't want a appointment, thank you.
You know, as everyone does, you get little things that happen that stop you dead in your tracks, for the average person those things are quite big, mine are often small and highly irritating. (Not saying that big things aren't also very irritating) but for me its learning how to deal with those things that stop me from doing some things and how to behave during and after the said irritating moment. So, two things happened last week that stopped me in my tacks but my reaction to those things were completely different.
At the school where I work, to stop unwanted small humans wondering into the staff room and being in danger of kettles, the shredder and to stop them eating our chocolate stash, we have a coded door, its one on those silver jobbies with numbers on, and we have a code. I couldn't tell you what the code is, as I cant see the numbers so I have a little orange rubber dot thing stuck on the first number of the code and I have learnt the pattern, this works perfectly, until the bloody dot thing fell off.  There I stood like a complete idiot, having no clue where to start or which buttons to press, so panic, the tummy starts doing the churning thing and my hands start to get clammy, do I walk away form the door and hang around waiting for someone else to go though the door, Its absolutely daft, I don't like anyone to see me unable to do something, I dunno, maybe is a dignity thing. Anyway, while I am standing there pondering on my next move, unbeknown to me, our site manager (lets call him Dave!) appears behind me and asks if I am ok? In a very tiny voice, I tell him I have lost my dot! I don't really know what I expected him to say, but he simply said, 'oh yeah' and opened the door for me and let me in, I stood by the sink, and realised that I had totally forgotten what I had gone in there for, two seconds late Dave was back, with a replacement dot!!! I was so overcome, I could feel tears stinging in my eyes, what the hell, I was so grateful, and its only a bloody dot, but I could have hugged him, I thanked him loads and tried to pretend I had remembered what I had gone into the staff room for, in the end I went into the staff toilets and tried to compose myself!
Friday evening the girls and I had finished out Indian take away, and I got up to tidy the kitchen, my youngest followed me in to get herself a drink, I was happily loading the dishwasher when she says, 'ohhhh my god Mum, look at those ants' I hadn't seen any ants, but once she had pointed them out to me, my kitchen was covered, and I am not joking, with hundreds of flying ants, this turned into a frenzy on stamping on the ones on the floor, while the daughter was charging around with ant spray getting all the others that were climbing up the walls and all over the kitchen windows, I suppose because I was in my own environment and with the people I trust most in the world, I didn't feel ashamed that I hadn't even seen them and in the end it turned into a bit of a game as my eldest sat peering through the hatch from the living room to the kitchen and screaming 'theres another bloody blighter' and my youngest charging round with the hoover sucking them up once she had killed them, I don't understand why the absence of a dot made my feel so bad, especially as work is one of my most familiar places, and not seeing a swarm of insects can give me such a happy memory, even though  flying ants are nasty, yuk yuk yuk, what are they even for? what do they do, regular ants I understand, but the flying sort, are just gross, they seem to hatch, cause everyone to get goose bumps and then die, I wonder if you can get anteaters as pets? lol....am going off track, well, I will let u all know the outcome of Thursdays appointment as soon as I can, must admit, I usually sleep for a couple of days afterwards as it exhausts me and it can take anything up to 24 hours for the dilation to go down, years ago when I went to Ely Hospital, they gave me another eye drop that seemed to make the pupils go back to normal quicker but they don't seem to use that anymore. Anyway, speak soon and I hope everyone has a great week x

Reclaiming Independence

Hey everyone,
I am sat here in my sunny warm conservatory, the sun is going down and its been a busy but beautiful day, and I start to think about independence...what really is it? and how we take it for granted. As I have told you before, I have always been a fiercely independent woman, my sight has never been good enough for me to be able to drive, and I hate asking for help, hated relying on people to run me around, I would much prefer to get a train, bus or walk to a shop. I used to love cycling to work, I used to go out cycling with a friend, we would cycle to a pub, have lunch then cycle to a different one for pudding. I always thought that was the independence I lost, but that's not all the independence I lost at all, yesterday I went into Asda on my own, I hadn't written a list because all I needed was pizza and stuff for a salad, while I was walking through the town to Asda I realised that I was planning my route around the shop. The minute I got into the shop I began to feel anxious, but the route I had been thinking about sprang forward to the front of my brain, the usual bumping into people and getting in peoples way was all still there, but I am used to that now. I wondered down the card isle because it was empty and my anxiety melted away, I floated my way to the pizza counter feeling relaxed and confident...THEN! There was no one serving at the pizza counter!!!!!! A lady in her white overall's tells me to come back in about 10 minutes....10 BLOODY MINUTES!!! doesn't she know I have planned this route? what do I do now? I cant just stand there like a wally for 10 minutes, I smiled at the lady and backed away, bumping into a lady with a trolley with what looked like six months worth of shopping, she tutted and shook her head at me, suddenly I wanted to get out, run away. Last week when I was feeling low, a day like this would have sent me into floods of tears, not being able to adapt to changes, that's a form of independence loss for me,  I was angered, not at the lady in her overall, not at the lady with her massive trolley, but at myself. Its a effing pizza counter in Asda, how many people would have seen this as a real problem? some might have been a bit pissed that they couldn't have their pizza made for them as quickly as they would have liked, so I forced myself to wonder around the isles pretending to look interested in the difference between garden peas and marrowfat peas, then I went back to the counter and ordered my pizza's....that my friends is me regaining my independence, I could have run away, phoned my nearest and dearest and got him to come rescue me and get the pizzas, and he would have done exactly that, but I didn't. Independence means very different things for everyone, what we need to keep in our minds that its all the small things that make the big things easier. I have to start somewhere and while I do manage so well at somethings, others are shockingly difficult and frustrating.
I think acceptance is the first steps into regaining independence, if you don't know where you are in the world, what you are safely capable of, then how can you find a base for moving forward....I am crap at mowing the lawn, but I still do it, because I can and all the while I can do it safely, I will continue to do it.
Adapting your environment is a way of reclaiming that independence, for instance, I keep smashing the glasses in my dishwasher because I don't see them in there and dump other stuff on top of them, I could get someone else to load the dishwasher, but actually, I like doing it because I can, so after a lot of thought I brought these.....

Problem solved.

Obviously I brought more than three, they were £1 each from Tesco and I haven't smashed any....yet. I don't really know what I am trying to say, except we all look at life differently and what we perceive as having our independence is different too. I might come across to others as being awkward or irritable when I don't except help from others, but as so many things have been taken away, that I thrive on the things that I can do, no matter how big or small those things are.

On a different subject I have another counselling session tomorrow, and as promised, I will continue to let you know how I am finding counselling in this form. Last week, as you know, I had a lot of time to think, I don't think this type of thinking was very productive and I began to wonder if having counselling via email was right for me, but after re reading my last email from them, I realised that I hadn't read it properly at all! It had seemed very negative when I first read it and now wonder if this, added with the 'blind lady' in Woodbridge was the reason for my dark mood last week. I did speak to my contact at Action for Blind about this, and he mentioned a team that do like a phone counselling clinic thing, they phone you once a week, I know I wouldn't be comfortable telling someone my deepest darkest thoughts over the phone. Maybe I have to go backwards to go forwards, if you know what I mean. Some parts of my life have been covered that I haven't shared with anyone, so revisiting all those emotions has unsettled me, and I suppose our natural instinct is to stick our heads in the sand when there is something we don't want to talk about or remember, so I think for the sake of maintaining my sanity and the thought maybe of encouraging one of you out there to try this avenue of counselling I will keep on going, it'd be daft to give up now, if I don't see it to the end I cant give it a fair trial!! ....speak soon xx

Blind Lady

Hi Everyone,
well, half term has been a complete wash out here. I suppose the importance of my blog was to let you all in on the up and downs of my little life. I am truly down at the moment. Last Friday we took our class out to the park for a picnic, the sun shone and the children had a great day, ending the term on such a high, it was lovely. Saturday we woke to a hazy start but it soon brightened up inspiring me so do some gardening, my youngest cut the lawn for me and then we sat in the tidy looking garden all afternoon admiring our veggies. Mum popped up and we all went for a long walk with Ralph, calling in for a Chinese takeaway (for the girls, Chinese food is not good when you are on weight watchers, mind you, I put on a pound this week, so I might as well have eaten the bloody takeaway!!) Sunday, the girls wanted to crack on with revision, so Ralph and I went for a nice long walk and just had a chill day, perfect start to half term.
Bank holiday Monday we decided, as my eldest was going off to the slamdunk festival, my other half and my youngest would take Ralph for his very first trip to the seaside. The nearest coast to us is southend, but we figured that it might be too busy and overwhelming for Ralph, so we went to Felixstowe, via woodbridge, woodbridge in Suffolk is my most favourite place in the world to be, its calm and beautiful, no one is rushing, when I am there it feels like home. Its also where my dearest and most favourite friends live, when I am under their roof I feel safe, I know I can share my deepest thoughts without being judged, and I think that is an important part of wellbeing, is to have someone you can share everything with, someone to listen, but who is smart enough to understand that when you are sharing stuff you don't always need advising because just talking is enough. All that being said, we just didn't have time to call in on those people, mainly because they were working, but I did get my fix of tinkering boats! I love to hear the noise that boats masts make when they chink together and you can hear the boats sloshing in the water, the smells of the boat yard, oil and yacht varnish, just sitting watching people cleaning their boats and getting ready for the summer, so very very relaxing.  But, it was a grey and cold day, we ate lunch at the Whistle stop café, really lovely place to visit if you are ever down that way, while we sat there, there was a group of errr, pensioners, who had set up a stand for promoting knowledge of and asking for funding for guide dogs for the blind. I don't know why, but this seemed to spark something in the back of my brain, my stomach sank and I could feel my mood getting low, I watched them for a while, there was a lady sat on a chair, clearly 'blind' beside the stall and the group of others were standing a few feet away having a chat and a good laugh, she just sat there at the back with her blanket over her knees, smiling to herself, I still now while I am talking to you about it, have mixed emotions, sad, because is this what I have to look forward too? and anger, because she was happy to sit there as a sort of trophy,  I wanted to scream..'get up off of that chair, use your stick and go and stand in the middle of your friends and join in the bloody conversation, how dare you sit there and accept that its ok to be tucked up in a corner with a effing great label over your head' and then I felt bad because I don't understand what I am feeling or why I am feeling it. So I gather my family and march them off in the other direction up and over the bridge to walk along the river, and that was when I lost my contact lens, the local council are doing something with the path along the river, looks like resurfacing, but it was very windy and a gust caught a load of dust and most of it landed in my face and eyes, knocking the contact lens in my bad eye off and sent it rolling around the back of my eye, do you think I could get the bloody thing back, in the end I stopped poking around and just left it, between my daughter and partner they got me back to the car, It took a full 40 minutes for it to appear again, but it hurt so much as it was covered in dust, I don't know if I mentioned before but my contacts are hard, and a real bitch if you get something on them, when we were in the car I managed to get it out, my eye pouring with tears felt instant relief, there I sat with this tiny piece of glass in my hand not knowing how the hell I was going to clean it, what I should have done of course, was taken my spare set of lenses with me (let that be a lesson to you, always have a spare)  but what I did was pop it in my mouth then stick it back into my eye before anyone saw or I had time to think about it! There problem solved, yuk!!
Felixstowe was fairly quiet, that might have been due to the crap weather, but Ralph got on the beach, there were signs everywhere telling you that dogs weren't allowed on the beach from May to September, but as there was no one swimming in the sea or attempting to sunbathe, we took a chance, along with about 20 other dog owners who had done the same, and he loved it!!

Tuesday morning we were woken up by torrential rain that never really stopped for 3 days, its been so cold we had to put the heating back on. Wednesday my youngest had a appointment with Chums, and we thought as Wrest park is the other side of the road, we would go for lunch there and then look around the gardens and the house, as I sat in the parents room on the second floor of the building, listening the rain drumming on the windows, I was already thinking about hot chocolate, freshly cooked bread with loads of butter, my pj's and a dvd, and that's what we did.

Yesterday, Ralph and I got up early, wrapped up and walked down to check on my sisters horse, As we got home my Tesco delivery arrived, I stood at the front door and realised I had forgotten my key...and that is how the day carried on, in the end I went back to bed, which is a complete no no in my book, I got up at about 1.30pm and tried to pull myself up and out of this awful dark mood I have been in all week, it didn't really work, in the end I got on the cross trainer and did only 20 minutes, but it was a hard 20 mins, when I finished my legs were all wobbly and I could hardly breathe, but I felt better. This morning I feel better, I AM going to get out of bed, get dressed and go out, I don't know where this week has gone, but I am glad its gone and hopefully my awful negative mood has gone with it. I still don't understand why the blind lady upset me so much, and I need to stop looking for a answer to it, I don't think there is one, my way of looking at life might not be the same as the old lady's, she was happy to sit there, I wouldn't have been and that's all there is to it. x