dog update

Well, as things go, I'm still waiting to hear more on new dog info. The
biggest problem has been figuring out how to get me to/from seeing eye.
I can't fly so that's out unless a miracle happens. I asked pauline
about the potential of taking the train. She said that taking the train
there wouldn't be a problem but coming home may be a problem but she'd
talk to someone in training and then we'd go from there. They are
basically worried about a long trip home with a dog.

If they say no to my taking the train home with the dog then i suspect
i'll be waiting a year for home training.

This frustrates me. It shouldn't be this dificult just to go from one
end of the country to another. In other countries you can fly around x
country just by boarding a plane. You don't have to give your life blood
just to get an id card to fly, and rumor has it that in canada you can
fly with out an id etc as well. Oh well, what can be done about it. Not
much it seems.

alternative medicine

It's been a while since i've written much. Been in and out of the
hospital once or twice. On the plus side, there's a chance that my
doctor may have found more of the cause of my problem. Turns out one of
my bloodpressure meds has been giving me chronic pancreatitus. They
changed out my meds stopped the vommitting and sent me home. So far no
nausia etc so let's pray that this is the fix and there won't be any
more problems.

So a while back i decided to go off the majority of the meds i've been
on excluding the important stuff like bp/stomach meds. I decided to try
herbal medicine instead and this seems to be farely successful. My pain
levels are much much lower thanks to the devils claw and other things.
Not so tired durring the day and a lot more flexible and functional.

I'm incredibley glad about this. I'm sleeping better at night, in less
pain, more flexible and over all more healthy. Hopefully with time i can
lose the remaining weight that i need to.

does anyone understand the stupidity of the government sometimes?

Well, i tried to start the process of getting my birth certificate and other paperwork so i can renew my florida id card so that i can fly to go get my dog. Well, right now things are almost stalled. When my father adopted me when my parents got married apparrently the courts didn't file the court order with the name change on it. So now because of a mistake the government made, i get to pay their price. The cost of the birth certificate is a min cost of $48 now when it should have been $22. This is because i have to file the damn court order because the stupid courts did not.

I'm furious. Now, i have to pray that seeing eye will come to florida to train me with a dog which they may not. Not only that, but this will make getting a dog take even longer because either A, a trainer has to come out and work with me here, or B, it means i basically have to put getting my dog on hold till i can get all of this paperwork in order. I want to scream, I'm stuck paying for something that the damn government has decided is no longer useful. Oh sure i have a useful birth certificate, they've accepted it for years, but, it's not certified, and apparrently in order to get an id card, you have to have certified paperwork. Ok getting that would have been easy, but the courts had to go and screw things up even more by not filing the adoption paperwork. This means we not only have to do it, but it puts everything behind schedule by anywhere from 1 to 2 months.

The thing that's got me so upset about it all is i can't fight it, i just have to bite my tongue and pay for someone else's fuck up.

Oh well. I'll deal, but i strongly dislike it.

If this had been say 10 years ago, i could have gone into the DMV, gotten a new id with my birth certificate and adoption papers like i've done for years, but now all of this is not good enough. They say it's to "protect american citizens"""""" or what ever the BS they call it is, but as far as i'm concerned all they're doing is hurting the american citizens, because if the courts or lawyers haven't done their jobs, the people who are well, for lack of better wording are victims of the courts mistakes we have to pay out the ass for them.

horrible last couple of days

So i got out of the hospital yesterday afternoon after being there basically since sunday night. It all started saturday when my stomach went a little crazy. That in itself is nothing really new it's just that this time it didn't recover on it's own so ended up in the hospital.

Chris was wonderful, he stayed with me as much as he could and did his best to help me. The hospital trip this time was another story all together. The doctors did everything they could not to admit me even going as far as still sending me home still vommitting. The end result was that we came home for a couple hours sunday night and ended up gong back at 6am sunday morning. They tried saying there was nothing wrong with me and sending me home again, but we refused to go and they finally admitted me. The poor care continued. When we got to our room the staff was nearly hostile. Actually i should correct that the day nurse i had monday and tuesday was nice, but the night nurse we had and yesterday's nurse were totally unhelpful.

They were sitting out at the desk one time just chatting away and totally ignoring my calls for help, finally i said screw them i couldn't hold it any more and unhooked myself and went to the bathroom. Still didn't make it to the toilet and that totally pissed me off. If they had come in the first couple times i begged for help we wouldn't have had that problem. There were similar reoccurrences like that but different situations.

I'm furious over the whole experience. That hospital has never been that rude or inconsiderate before but this time they were. It wasn't just the night staff and the nurse i had yesterday either but also the doctors at the ER. The hospitalists weren't so bad they were at least nice

What i want to know is why. Is it because i'm a medicade patient and the government is looking for ways to cut medicade? Is it because my husband and i are blind and they think they can get away with poor treatment? I'd bet you that if i'd have had a sited person there it may not have gone the way it did i really don't know though. Either way i found the whole thing disturbing.

We got home last night though and i'm more then glad to be out of the hospital. I go back on the 29th to get my paceemaker adjusted though so we'll see what happens. chances are they'll up the settings on the pacemaker to compensate for my stomach being stupid.

I heard of this really neat android app the other day called high q mp3 recorder. I wasn't going to get it origionall till i listened to a sound file that someone from the eyes-free google group had uploaded. The sound is incredible.lots of high quality sound. I might use this when i go to get my dog. Record the walking and training sessions and that way others can hear some of what goes on while i'm in training.

back to the seeing eye for round 2

So, i found out a while ago that i've been cleared to go back for my second dog from the seeing eye. This is something i've been pretty much looking forward to since i retired savannah back in march.

Now though the waiting really begins.I was told that it looks like late fall to mid winter is when i'll be going back into class but a lot depends on just when they get a dog for me. I got the impression that the only thing we're waiting for now is a dog for me.

Not quite sure how i feel about spending 3 weeks in NJ in the middle of the winter. On one hand it's going to be a blast. I've not seen snow since 1991 or so, so that part will be fun. On the other hand though it's gonna be cold, real cold. At least if i remember correctly, there's some coffee shops along those routes, guess i'll be drinking lots of coffee along the way....Wonder how many of those are starbucks.

I'm starting to wonder right about now what kind of dog i'll get. Another shephard that's bouncey and ready to work like savannah? A happy bouncey golden that's ready to work and play? Could be any really. TSE knows i want a shephard and that's certainly what i hope i get, however i also know that they know what's best and they'll do their best to match me with a dog that will work best for my current situation.

It's kind of funny though, when the trainer came down to re-evaluate me for a dog i wasn't overly active but with chris here that's changing again, i certainly hope that what ever kind of dog i get, it's going to be one that's ready to adapt to changes in life like savannah was. That's one trait i hope my new dog has as well.

change in plans!

Well, Iwe were making plans to go to move to oklahoma but seems i can't
leave the state of florida because of the pacemaker, well i can leave to
travel but not to actually move.

We were looking forward to moving but seems we can't now.

thoughts on android and accessibility

I have mixed feelings about this particular topic... On one hand, i love
my android, on the other...Every phone maker puts their garbage on it
such as htc sense ui or samsung touchwiz and so on. Companies fail to
realize that things like htc sense make it almost impossible for a blind
person to use it with out rooting it and voiding the warantee.

With the samsung touchwiz it causes a couple problems such as talkback
randomly crashing on my phone. I've not had to root mine yet but i've
definitly thought about it, I'd rather it have a basic stock rom rather
then fighting repeatedly with stupid maker garbage.

My poor husband on the other hand has an htc evo shift. I love it or at
least i love it for the fact that it's running android 2.3 where as i'm
only running 2.2.

All in all i'm impressed by google working to make android accessible.
Many blind users say that android isn't really ready for accessibility
yet, they say that it needs to be more advanced.

My thought is that a lot of these blind users also deal with an iphone
and they expect all other phones to just work like the iphone. That in
itself is wrong. You can't expect google to live up to apple. Google has
their own way of doing accessibility, and long as it works, i'm happy
with that.