Where to begin to answer their question. Well, everyone
handles a challenge in their life completely differently to the next person.
Being presented with a life changing condition whereby there will be limited or
no chance of reversal for the rest of your life is not exactly a time when you want
to throw a huge party. Then again, a party sometimes is not the worst idea.
It’s always good to have a bit of craic. Career, family, relationships, daily
life are all going to change. ‘It’s not
the end of the world’ I explained. It sounds patronizing and a cliché and it’s
easy for me to say as I am well used to it by now; but seriously it’s not the
end of the world. You’ll just find yourself on a completely different path.
There’s no point in sugar coating it. It is going to suck
big time. And some disabilities suck a lot more than others. For instance,
there’s a lot worse visual conditions than mine. Not sure I would have been
able to handle losing my sight completely or my hearing for that matter.
Imagine not being able to listen to music. I suppose the bonuses for someone
who is hard of hearing is they can still see. At the very beginning though you
have to learn things all over again, Obviously I’m talking about someone in my
case who hasn’t had the condition from birth. I’ll talk about all this again in
another chapter but things like reading mail, trying to figure out what things
are in the supermarket, or trying to figure out where you are when you fly into
a strange airport. And do you know how hard it is to jay walk when you can’t
see, especially now with these silent hybrid cars.
Over the years I’ve met people who have lost their sight
completely and others who have lost their hearing completely and I ask them how
do they cope. They tell you the same thing I’m telling you; they have adapted
and gone down a new path in life. It is funny when you have three young men, two can’t
see well and one can’t hear, and the topic of conversation is girls. We’re
jealous of the guy who can’t hear because he can see girls and catch their eye.
We might have disabilities, but we are guys after all. Now I digress.
Let’s get back to basics. No matter what type of disability
you end up with don’t break the daily routine, and if there is something you
want to do, just do it no matter how hard. There is no doubt the daily simple
things that we all take for granted will be a new challenge and have to be
learned all over again when a disability kicks in, but you have to remember the
daily chores are the easy challenges and they have to remain as such. You
cannot let them become a trial, they must remain daily life, routine and easy.
It’s OK to ask for help by the way. Believe it or not the latter is probably
one of the hardest challenges you’ll encounter. Nowadays the majority of people
don’t mind helping you out - we’ll talk about that again. So, to keep things in
perspective and the daily routine remains a non-challenge, every now and then
throw in something that is a real challenge. As in hardcore, one that will scare
the bejebus out of you.
I recently joined a hiking group. I love the hills, but
since I left my old job I wasn’t getting out enough. The guys in the group are great.
A few weeks back we went to Zipit over in Tibradden Wood. This is all about climbing
in the trees, obstacles in the trees, and buzzing down ziplines. Really cool
stuff. For safety you are given a harness and you have to clip on to wire ropes
so if you slip you don’t end up on the forest floor. It had been a long time
since I’d done any form of abseiling or rock-climbing and I'll admit I was
somewhat nervous. Everyone else can look up and see the various courses and up
there they can make out the runs ahead, but not me. I looked at the carabiner with curiosity and
tried to figure out how I was going to make out the wire rope or the obstacles.
I explained my case to the instructor from Zipit. He said, ‘what’s the problem,
we’ve had complete blind people complete the red course (which is the highest
and hardest run)’. “I like this guy” I thought to myself. If a person who can’t see at
all can do it then there’s no reason I can’t. He was right. What was the
problem - so up we went. The guys, or I should say three ladies, from my group
helped me out. What can I say, perks of having a disability. It’s hard to explain
some of the obstacles. For example, one was a wooden bridge. However, the rungs
were not linked together, so every time you stood on one it would move. And
that was an easy one. And yes, it scared the bejebus out of me, but it was
great craic and some adrenaline buzz, especially the long ziplines. And it was
rather amusing to see ‘able’ bodied people struggling and crumbling under the
pressure of being up so high.
The point is that when you are faced with a disability at
the beginning everything is a challenge, even jay walking. When you start doing
things that ‘able’ bodied people find difficult, or even go beyond that, the things
that seemed a challenge at the beginning are now made to look trivial.
More stories to follow shortly.
Oh yeah go to Zipit and scare the bejebus out of yourself. www.zipit.ie
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