Let me just say right now what a fantabulous job the kitchen is doing with my ARFID. Like, seriously, I have never been catered to (pun intended) so thoroughly (a) without either someone else or myself having to do a boat-load of extraneous advocacy, and-or (b) without feeling like I’m a huge, babyish burden.
Between the jet-lag, nerve-citedness, and my inability to sleep on any pillow ever besides my own (I really should invest in a travel pillow, but I bet that wouldn’t work right either), I wasn’t too hungry for breakfast. The sausages were delicious, though, and I already requested milk and water for every meal. It just so happens that I’ve felt a little sluggish in my body of late, and because soda is an easy scapegoat, I have blamed him and am divorcing him forthwith, at least for the time being. Just when there’s a shelf literally Braille-labeled “Pepsi” in the RA’s office, calling to me. Anyway, the kitchen staff also checked in with me, knew all about my safe foods (I sent them a list, but I often do that and people just willfully disregard it or think I’m exaggerating), and basically said they’d give me Caitlin-food substitutions (IE, plain chicken, burgers, peanut-butter-no-jelly sandwiches, etc.) in place of the fancy things I won’t eat, which is pretty much every meal here, because guide dog schools, like I said, are basically akin to resorts … and are also way better than the literal cruise I went on last year, which had me subsisting on milk, salami and cheese slices, and soft-serve from one floor and Oreo crumbs Martha spirited from a whole different place on the ship.
I also continue to love the Braille Rails, as I call them. Just having those bump-dots and all the Braille labels as reference points is so cool.
After breakfast, we got buddied up with our 1:1 instructors, but because I am a lucky duck, I get TWO instructors: Jeffrey, who’s an intern (he’s almost done!) and Hannah, who my friend, Alexis told me was awesome! They were both incredibly sweet, understanding, and hilarious from the get-go, which quickly put me at ease. I mentioned my anxiety around mobility, and all of my “anti-goals,” as I call them: dropoffs, instructors following you silently, etc. Jeffrey was very clear that I’ll have a say in everything we do, AND he added that a dropoff at the end of the week might be a good confidence-builder IF I decide I want to do it. That thought, of course, is beyond horrifying right now, but I shall not pass judgment until I get to Friday … or I guess Thursday.
I also talked about my general feeling, whenever I do solo mobility, that I’m in the way, slowing people down, appearing clumsy and incompetent, etc., and that I struggle with advocating for my own bodily autonomy in the face of a stranger or a frenetic situation. It was really nice to air these grievances and feel truly understood and respected.
I also mentioned that I have no idea if my cane technique is ideal, or even if my cane’s length was ideal, so we started out using a few different canes. We settled on one that, I think, is slightly longer than the one I brought, which I remembered later is my shortest one. I got a shorter one to accommodate my love for the Pathfinder and Sensaball tips, which are free-wheeling and, as I once said to a friend, “bounce over cracks with tremendous alacrity.” I love these tips, but they increase both the weight and length of the cane. AND, as it develops, I’m very tense in the way I hold my cane. Hannah had me laughing when she called it a “dinosaur arm,” and Jeffrey cited “Go, go, gadget.” This is why we all vibed.
Some fun news is that I nailed stairs, and that, actually, aside from my needing to choke up less on the cane handle and work on narrowing my arc, my cane technique is not rusty enough to give me tetanus. Considering that I haven’t had consistent O&M (I literally just wrote M&M, oops) since I was eighteen, and from sixteen to eighteen was with a guide dog, not a cane, I’m actually surprised I don’t have more egregiously bad habits than I do.
My arc has been an issue ever since I can remember. Teachers used to tease that it looked like I was clearing the way for ten people. I’ve gotten better at keeping it within my shoulders, but it still sometimes goes a little far to the side. This is a problem because, for example, if your cane’s way off to the left and straggling its way back to the right, something might hit me on my right side while the cane’s trying to catch up. So if the arc’s narrower, it has less ground to cover and will keep me safer in my little bubble.
The tricky part is that, between narrowing the arc, needing to relax my wrist and elbow while holding the cane closer to my body, and holding the cane closer to its top rather than further down the handle, my arm and wrist were complaining a bit. Hopefully, it’s just a new sensation, and as it becomes muscle memory, it will be easier on my weak little spindly wrists.
Another thing I asked about, because I literally promised someone I would (although now I forget who I promised!), was how to instruct a panicked, untrained sightie in guiding me through a doorway. Because doors open so many different ways, people are rushing, they’re often crowded areas, etc., I find that this is a place where many guides just freak out, flail, grab, push, pull, abandon, etc. It turns out that the life hack is to encourage the guide to do the narrow-passage technique and continue guiding as normal. I’m excited to see if instructing in this way will stop people from feeling awful about how doorways inevitably go.
I cited some other things I want to work on, but I imagine we WILL work on them and they’ll come up then, so I won’t go on and on. We walked the practice course twice to cement the relaxed shoulder, all-in-the-wrist technique, and reviewed the dorm one more time.
I then had a delicious peanut butter sandwich for lunch, which honestly was just so … calming and predictable, haha. I also discovered that the braille schedule on the bulletin board in the hallway had been tacked up upside-down, which caused some hilarity.
For the afternoon session, we went to the downtown to the training center there. The mobility stuff gets a little more technical here, but I’ll share some cool stuff we worked on:
* Anchoring: I somehow had never heard of this or been taught it. Essentially, when your cane touches a doorway, you keep its tip flush with the doorway while lifting the cane so that it’s pressed vertically against the door. You can then use the cane, not your hands and fingers, to feel for a doorhandle. This could prevent some nasty bites from hinges or hasps or whatever all else doors are made of, although I suppose you also have to still be careful not to get hit in the face.
Similarly, you can use anchoring at curbs. I was always taught, when hitting a curb, to do a big, side to side sweep before stepping up. The anchoring technique involves bringing your feet close to your cane tip as it anchors to the step, then lifting your cane to gauge the step’s height, as well as the area just at the top of the step, enough for you to step up safely. Then, and only then, can you go on your merry way. This gives you a better sense of how high up the step is, and also prevents you from blazing up curbs while swinging your cane wildly in a sweep as you chase after it, the way I was doing.
* Cut-backs: Another thing I never heard about! Basically, cut-backs confirm that you’re maintaining your intended line of travel after crossing a street, rather than veering off into a sidewalk or alley. I’m still kinda figuring these out, but essentially, this gets you away from the street, and involves shorelining until you find the “opening” back to the sidewalk.
* I was introduced to the genius term “sidewalk junk” to refer to things like trash cans, parking meters, and random signs, which I loved. In turn, I kept unintentionally using ostentatious words like, well, ostentatious. And circuitous. And lackadaisical. Which amused Jeffrey … who promptly also started punning.
* I told Jeffrey that I was going to write about this experience in my blog, and he rallied that he needed to video-tape part of our lesson for his mobility exam portfolio thing. Seems only fair.
* Apparently, in quieter areas, if you cross crookedly, you don’t need to leap up onto the sidewalk like a scalded cat and start springing around trying to find the curb-cut. You can stay in the street, as long as you’re safe, and feel around with your cane to see if you’re close to the curb. Who knew?
* The Three Rules Of Street Crossing:
1. Plant your feet, as though they’re in cement. Jeffrey said “see-ment,” which Martha also says, which made me grin and emulate him.
2. Extend your cane across your body. This is called a diagonal, which does make sense, but for some reason, I literally forgot about five times what this step was called. It was unclear. My brain was probably shorting out from having had more mobility than I’ve seen (pun) in years.
3. Flagging: I just learned this one when I had a couple O&M lessons last year. This asks you to get drivers’ attention by decisively extending your cane and indicating that you’re beginning to walk. Both in high school and last year, I was taught to go really big with this, and when I’m asked to go big, I go big. I think I almost hit Jeffrey with my wild flagging … which is not surprising, because I smacked someone’s car roof last year when I learned this. Jeffrey told me that, like with my arc, I can go smaller and that, if I start on the right, I , which is where my cane seems to like to be when I start to cross a street.
4. Take a big first step, and then pick up that pace!
* I practiced soliciting assistance across a street from Hannah, who pretended to be a wrist-grabbing newb with no experience of blind-kind. We had a good little talk about bodily autonomy and not being afraid of inconveniencing sighted people in general, whether they’re guiding or getting in my way, as I travel. True, but hard for me to internalize.
Those were the highlights! Tomorrow, we’ll do some route-planning and intersections, maybe lighted ones. We just did “all quiet, all clear” crossings today, to practice the mechanics. Other folks did way more complex stuff, but I’m internalizing what Hannah and Jeffrey impressed upon me: that, literally, we’re all on our own path, and that building confidence and skills that feel helpful to me is all that matters.
Can I also just say that it’s super weird to me not being guided everywhere the instant I struggle? I mean, I fully own that I am extremely guilty of letting myself be guided even when I don’t need it … again, mostly because, the second I take a wrong turn, it feels like sighties everywhere have a whole fit and scurry over to save me, which often involves touching and grabbing. So it’s become so easy for me to just … avoid all that and let myself be guided. But there’s no grabbing here! People give verbal directions when asked, and I feel simultaneously looked after and more independent for having taken on that extra ten seconds of fumbling … because it’s not really fumbling, it’s just finding my way there, and who cares what it looks like? It’s wild to me how I can and do totally believe this for other people, but have such a hard time with it for my own self.
I appreciate Jeffrey and Hannah for making mobility fun again, and told them so. There was so much laughter, talking, and silliness, and yet, we got a ton done. They were so kind, encouraging, and complimentary, and I feel so hopeful in light of that. As I told them, I do want to learn, and I do want to be better at mobility than I am. It just never felt particularly relevant to me, nor did I feel like I was able to understand it. They talked some about how the approaches to mobility are changing, and taking into account that a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t ideal in many cases.
In closing, we had a fun, tasty dinner … I ate a whole chicken breast and garlic bread, which is a lot for me in what has the potential to be a high-stress, intense week, without anyone here I know. At guide dog school, they literally called my mom to make sure I wasn’t going to die because I was eating so little and running myself so ragged. Granted, I wasn’t diagnosed with ARFID yet, so didn’t get any food accommodations, and it was a whole month, and I was a nervous wreck, but still! I love not having to worry about food on top of everything else. AND they gave me a cup of milk to-go for my room. So kind.
And now I have written these blogs while intermittently getting up to dance and sing to everything from “Dear Evan Hansen” to Disney jams, and it’s definitely time to get to bed. Sweet dreams and more tomorrow, assuming I still have the strength, haha. But I feel great, and am so, so happy that I took this plunge and that I’m being supported and taught in a way which feels fun, consensual, and accessible to me.
Stay tuned!
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