Blog 32 October 11 2012

Blog 32 October 11 2012

Being Thankful!

October is always a special time for me. It reminds me of special time of when my family was together; my mom and brother were still with us. My other brother was flown in from BC he was in the military. I can’t say it was a happy period that we got together but as a family we came together!

In October 1978 at the age of fifteen I received a bone marrow transplant from my older brother. At a time when bone-marrow where new and cutting edge technique. There were not many doctors doing these procedures. The doctor who did my transplant had literally just got off the plane a couple of weeks earlier and was in Montreal to setup a Bone-marrow transplant department.  In 1978 the guidelines were strict in regards to donors. Unlike today where donors only have to be a parciule match to be considered a donor back then you almost had to be an exact match.

I am remember sitting with the doctor with all my family in the room and he asked if we had anymore relatives to test because we would need a lot of family to find a good match.

(just like back then and today God gave me many blessings), after all the testing of the immediate-family the doctor came back and broke the news to us that we did not have one donor but we had two donors! The other donor that could have given me the transplant was my sister. So thought was if it did not work the first time, we could do it again since there were two donors.

The rest of the siblings were matches for other vital nutrients that I would need after in the way of transfusions.

It was a long road before to get to the transplant stage and it was a longer road to recovery! I thank God for my family every day and friends.

Today is no exception I thank God for my wife and kids.  I thank him for my sister and brothers, I thank him for my friends who are also to me my family.

This October I also got to celebrate my first year wedding anniversary to a wonderful woman who loves me and takes care of me.

As I look back over these 34 years and recount everything that has gone on in my life, I can’t say it was easy but nothing in my life! I am thankful that I had another opportunity be the father I wanted to be! To be the husband I wanted to be! To be a better friend!

To be the man God intended me to be!

I am very thankful and to celebrate I went and had my eye adjusted today and it feels great, and Lucky is doing fantastic!

Look for more Adventures around the corner!  

Lucky has been working really hard these last couple of day's. This photo was just after his supper.      

Blog 31 Oct 1 2012 End of September !

Blog   31 Oct 1 2012

End of September !

The end of summer and the beginning of fall is upon us and what I mean by that is! That I start back to school on September 6 , Chris has started back to school already!  The College students are already backing to class, and although Chris is only auditing classes he is still considered a part of the college. We are very glad that the strikes have not affected him.

As I look back over the summer and wonder where all the time went? I was sitting in my office and recounting all things I wanted to do over the summer. I had to ask myself did accomplish what I wanted to do or like always did I over book my schedule.

As I reviewed my list of things I realized that I did the important things!

The things I did not get done , were I did not blog as much as I wanted, I did not travel as much as I wanted and I did not write a paper for the course for the class I took at the Prespiterina college. I did not train as hard as I wanted too.

The big thing I realized was I need to get an air conditioner for my home office! The summer we had was horrific for the heat. I  think a lot of what I did do, I trained with Lucky! The training with Lucky was the most important part of the summer. We really have come together as a team. I got him to the campus we found our classes, we traveled on the bus and I have be bringing him on the metro. I have to say out of all the training we did over the summer the metro was for me was the scariest! The metro in Montreal scares sight people half the time so imagine being visually impaired!  It is chaos at its best.

People running to catch the metro and people trying to get off, sometimes the announcement on what stop we are coming to does not work! I then have to count from where we are to where we are getting off. It gets very confusing most of the time people on the metro do not want to talk to you.

Most of all I have to apologize to everyone for not staying in touch through my Blog or by e-mail or calling.

I have been going through a transition the last two months. I had to go through  a medication transition. Some of t he medication I have been taking was starting to cause me some discomfort, most of all I have been sleeping a lot. I seen my doctor at the end of July we did some adjustments however the adjustments took some time to work in the mean time I have just been resting when I can and going to school and working Lucky and that has been just enough. We have traveling 3 days a week into Montreal for class. Our day starts at 5am and we are home by 4pm, by the end of the day Lucky and I are ready to rest.

The other transition I have been doing is taking Jaws classes. JAWS, is a total speaking program that allows you to type or read documents without looking at the screen. This has been a big adjustment going from sighted computer work to non sighted and just listening to what being said were you are in the document and then doing corrections without seeing the words.  

The hardest part is when I leave my screen on when I work in Jaws I see the outline of the document but I cannot see what is being typed. This is frustrating since with the little sight I have in my one eye I end up trying to see where I am, I end up just turning off the screen so I can work.

The other hardest part of the transition to Jaws remembering all the commands! The hard part is there is no mouse to use all the commands are done either through the number key pad or the key board.

So with that said I waited to this blog until I could do it using JAWS that’s right I finished the word part of the training and now it is just practice, practice.

The other thing about using Jaws is I have to use head phones to work not because it is hard to hear, but my wife and I share an office.

Sometimes when we are working together she will type some of the words or letters that are being said or she will turn to me and say I got to tell you what I just read so there goes my concentration on what I was trying to write. Then sometimes out of the blue the computer will say something without me in the room she then thinks someone else is the office with me.

This year has been an exciting and hard year but the most important part is we celebrate our one year wedding anniversary today we look forward to many more.

I will attach a picture of Lucky and Addison at the office of my academic adviser who is also visually impaired who also just got his guide dog.

I hope to be blogging more now since I am doing a lot better.        

Lucky & Addison at Concordia University

Lucky -& Addison at Concordia University

Taken on Sep 10 2012