Current mood:	determined
Entry tags:	mobility training, vision

Mobility training from today and tuesday
I never got around to writing up what we did in mobility training on Tuesday and I wanted to really write up what today was like.

Tuesday was a review of the Sighted Guide method, and some more work on going through doors. And then we went over to work on some technique with the cane. Originally the first thing I was shown was just a cross body way of holding it so that there was no motion. On Tuesday we started with introducing a back and forth motion. That in and of itself is not that hard, though he said that sometimes it can be hard to for new users to keep the can arc within a shoulders width (the goal). If anything I'm overly cautious of going outside of that distance and don't move the cane far enough back and forth, but have been getting better. The more difficult piece is the rythmn of walking with the cane properly. The idea being that the can is moving away from the foot that is moving forward. This takes some time to process as there is a lot going on (at least for me). Making sure that you have the cane held properly and and your wrist in the right position, the can moving back and forth properly and then you have to walk. I was doing ok by the time we went back inside Tuesday.

Today we once again did some Sighted guide review and then back to the cane technique. Reviewing what we did last time and then adding in Contacting an object. After working on getting that properly, without a blindfold then I was to do it blindfolded. The "object" that I was contacting was the wall of a building, we were on a playground. What turned out the be the hardest part under the blindfold was that once I started at the wall and waled away from it and needed to turn around to walk back towards it to do the contact, making that 180 degree turn was difficult. Heck, at first even walking out straight from the wall was a little screwy. But, he showed me how to square myself with the wall so as to walk more straight away from it. Then using the way the sun felt make a better estimation of that 180 degree turn.

Today I also had on my hearing aids for mobility training, not sure if that was the best idea, but I did. It was kind of neat during the Sighted Guide review, except that I got a bit distracted by the sounds and missed some of the cues that something was happening (new inputs can be overpowering). But, then when we did the blindfolded work with the cane and the additional strain of the sound of the hearing aids it drained me pretty good. I was exhausted at the end of it. It was hard to focus and sort out all the things that were happening. I didn't have to think about the cane movement so much any more, but trying to walk with the cane with *NO* visual cues and all of the noise that I can't sort out so well (still working on getting some sort of directionality feel to the hearing aids).

I tried to explain to the instructor that the hearing aids are not a fix it to everything. I still can't follow what he is saying when I am blindfolded, though I get I catch words here and there. And even if speech was not an issue, I can't wear them when it is raining and this is Portland. There are other reasons for NOT wearing hearing aids, some of which are personal and simply choosing to not wear them that day or whatever. Sometimes you need a break.