Day One
I’m on the way to Mobile, Alabama. Flying into Mobile, actually. Staying in Sarahland and working in Chickasaw. The weather forecast keeps changing for the worse every time I check it. I pay a little too close attention to the weather since I fly so much. So close that I know what they predicted 20 minutes ago and can compare it to the current prediction.
I’m flying the other airline today, which already makes me nervous, it’s very small (just three seats across), the flight attendant is visually sizing everyone up as they board, trying to decide where to seat them according to their weight, and I’m flying into what may be the worst storm ever recorded. It could be the worst. It happens to someone all the time. I once flew out west on a very small plane and they were actually asking people how much they weighed as they boarded and sat them accordingly. (We were still calling people stewards and stewardesses back then, if that tells you how long ago it was…)
I don’t know who did the math, but being a not-small person, I was still seated next to a giant with the largest shoulder span I’ve ever seen. We spent the 97-hour flight alternately leaning forward and back so we could “spread out” some. Intolerable. Completely intolerable. I’m lucky enough, on this flight, to be seated on the single side of the plane. Despite this, I asked the flight attendant (see how I’ve evolved?) if I could move a couple of rows back, where a two-seat aisle was completely empty so I could “spread out” some, but she was really worried about the math she’d already done. I’m not one to ask anyone to do any more math than they have to, so I let it go.
If my cousin Kristy was the attendant, I would have moved without asking and she could have computed the change in her head before I had my seatbelt unfastened. She’s a math teacher extraordinaire, and one of the absolute kindest hearts on the planet, so she would’ve not only let me change seats without even a hassled look on her face, she would have also already calculated the possibility of everyone on the flight asking for changes, had us up in the air on time and had everyone feeling better about themselves as people and about their station in life than before they started. Lovely, lovely soul, my cousin Kristy.
It’s storming in Mobile when I land, but not bad. The math having worked out OK, the flight was uneventful as well. Also, my son Jack loaned me his Beats, so the noise of the flight was dulled by the dulcet tones of David Hartley-Margolin reading to me about Jack Ryan saving the world. Again. That Tom Clancy guy, he’s probably gonna do real well in the world of writing, I bet.
Day Two
I’m here in Alabama to work with Dustyn, who had applied for a Leader Dog, but it was determined that he needed more orientation and mobility (O&M) before moving forward. He also has diabetes and is on dialysis three days a week, so that complicates things even further. As I work on getting his initial interview done, the rain keeps pounding down harder and harder. So hard that I honestly thought water was leaking into the house but found out later that the filters in the two large aquariums in the living room next to me needed cleaning and were making more noise than usual.
Nonetheless, it’s still coming down in sheets outside, and Dustyn and I decide to drive through the routes he wants to travel when the animals aren’t lining up in pairs. It was a LOT of rain. After scouting out his routes, we decided to make the most of our time by working indoors at one of Dustyn’s favorite places, Academy.
Dustyn loves to fish and has forgotten more about fishing than most people currently know. I did my best to take as many mental notes as I could, always hoping to improve my game. We discussed travel inside stores and across open parking lots (which are evil places) and got more work done than I originally thought we would. He bought some gelatinous objects that theoretically looked like crawfish that he swears by for bait and we headed to the house, the rain having barely subsided before dark. We’ll try again tomorrow.
Day Three
The best thing about working in the south is that I get to grocery shop at Publix. There’s one right across the highway from my hotel and I’m excited about having them so close so I can stock up for the week. They’ve got a great deli and they make a great subway sandwich, a Pub Sub, and their fried chicken is better than Gill’s (Big Spring, TX folks will understand this reference. Sundays after church, when Mom didn’t have a roast going, we sometimes got treated to Gill’s. You had to stand in line just to get the privilege of standing in line to get chicken at Gill’s. My dad always got the little package of livers and gizzards. I don’t remember the line being very long for livers and gizzards…). They also have my favorite Italian crackers, and usually my favorite Scottish Breakfast tea. I’m drinking English tea this week, though, and it shows in my performance…
Dustyn and I meet up after another pretty salty thunderstorm and get right to work. He’s decided to work on one particular route this week in order to get really good at it and gain some confidence.
He’s been getting O&M from the state of Alabama, and he’s gotten really good instruction, as evidenced by his present level of skills. What Leader Dog’s program allows us to do, though, is do what we do over multiple days. I’ve preached on here about what repetition does: it breeds confidence. Confidence breeds exploration. And exploration breeds expanded routes. Clients who are interested in using a dog for a travel tool need multiple, purposeful routes for the dog to travel. They need to do what they’ve been trained to do, multiple times a day and all throughout the week. Dustyn has three pretty good routes, and with added confidence, he will expand on those routes in order to create more routes.
The route he’s chosen to work on first is to the local Food Mart. It’s a pretty complex route, including curb travel (no sidewalks), sidewalk travel, parking lot travel and crossings at both stop sign and light-controlled intersections. It’s a route that will really showcase his abilities.
Day Five
Dustyn and I head out to the Food Mart again and most of the puddles have turned to mud. The mud is not great for the ball bearings in his roller tip, but the puddles that are NOT mud are plentiful as well, and we alternately muck up his tip and wash it off. He’s getting pretty good at it.
On our first trip today, we passed by a parked car with a shirtless young man sitting in the driver’s seat, windows down, AC on, smoking a cigarette. On our second attempt at the route later in the day, we find the young man in the same scenario. On the third attempt a couple days later, he’s still smoking, but he’s outside and leaning on the car like James Dean. That’s where the comparisons to James stop, though. I personally go shirtless when I shower and almost never any other time. For a reason. Nobody wants to see that. I’m of the opinion that, unless you’re built like a Greek god, you should keep your shirt on. Our local James Dean was not built like a Greek god. He was very pleasant, except for the smoke, but really needed a shirt.
Dustyn made the trip twice today because he’s motivated to get it down correctly. We encounter several obstacles along the way, two that really stick out: the front bumper of a car that was not attached to the car, lying on the curb, and two storm drains NOT covered by their metal lid. Both lids were close to their homes, but not on top as they should be. The temptation for most certified orientation and mobility specialists (COMS) is to move these things or forewarn our clients about them, but the real world isn’t straight and orderly all the time. If I continue to tell my clients about upcoming obstacles, then they need me the next time and the next, etc. Better to teach them good skills and trust them to use them for their own good. Dustyn found the bumper and the open storm drains each time with plenty of reaction time, which is what good cane skills do for you: give you reaction time. Braking distance. Now, as a COMS, I’m always close enough to intervene without being so close that I interfere, but my job is to work myself out of a job with every client. They need to not need me.
Day Seven
Dustyn’s COMS from the state joined us today. Kellee covers a very large area and has a very large caseload, something that is fairly common among state services. There’s just not enough of us COMS out there to get all the people what they need. One study shows that there are currently 12.5 million people in the U.S. living with vision loss and that by the year 2050, there’ll be 25 million persons who are legally blind and that only 3% of them will have access to services after they turn 18.
O&M services are more readily accessible to school-aged children, but if they don’t get adequate services before they graduate, there’s a really good chance that they won’t afterwards. All that to say, Kellee is very much like the cavalry riding the range to protect the homesteaders from those who would seek to do them harm. She usually comes in just in time to save the day, but everyone, including Kellee, would be better off with a maintenance program instead. Just like the U.S. Army eventually did with all their frontier forts. (OK, I know that was a stretch, and maybe a tad dramatic, but I get author’s privilege, and I liked it.) Turns out, Kellee and I are alumni of the same university, Stephen F. Austin, from which we received our O&M degrees. Axe ‘em, Jacks!
So Dustyn had two mobility specialists observing today, and he got it from both of us. We did our best not to overwhelm him with information and he did really well. He got into more situations than he had previously, but that’s good. I want them to have trouble when I’m there, so I can help them with a strategy. Like veering on street crossings. The best AND worst low vision travelers out there veer on crossings. Not every time, and some more than others, but everyone veers. More important than figuring out WHY they veer, in my humble opinion, is knowing what to do WHEN they veer. You really need to have a strategy in place; a problem-solving process to fall back on when things don’t go as planned. Dustyn got lots of practice on our last lesson before I fly out.
Days Four and Six
You were wondering about the numbering system, weren’t’ you? While Dustyn was in dialysis, I did a little sigh-seeing and route scouting (and quite a bit of paperwork.) USS Alabama is always fun to see, and I drove underneath Mobile Bay a few times and sent my mom pictures from the tunnel just to freak her out. She’s told me the story of her and Dad coming back from Europe while Dad was in the Air Force. They had shipped a Volkswagen Beetle back and had to pick it up in New York. While driving through the Lincoln Tunnel underneath the Hudson River, they got stuck in traffic and my Dad kept trying to convince her that he could see leaks in the tiles while they waited. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t a big fan of tunnels in the first place, but I’m sure she wasn’t after that experience.
Day Eight
I flew back in to Houston on Friday evening so I could attend the INSITE Expo that is put on by HAVIN (Houston Area Visually Impaired Network). It’s a large gathering of consumers and providers that’s held at the University of Houston’s College of Optometry. I was able to speak to a lot of potential clients, some of whom were already aware of Leader Dog’s O&M program, but even more who were not.
It IS a bit of a stretch to understand that a guide dog organization would offer O&M, and that receiving O&M from us is incumbent on wanting a dog as a guide. I get it. But we’ve been doing it for over 20 years now and we’re still a pretty well-kept secret. Not because we want to be. We’re trying really hard to get to those 12.5 million folks who need it now, before it becomes 25 million in a few years. I may be retired by then. 12.5 seems doable. 25 million seems a little daunting. I hope to be fishing like Dustyn (with his gelatinous crawfish-like bait) by that time. Hopefully catching as much as he does…