Surviving the College Course

I have been a busy person for the past couple of months. I am looking into employment and retraining options for the future with the help of SMD (the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities) and this has led me on several adventures over the past year but the past two months have brought the largest set of challenges. I went back to school and I also started volunteering at a hospital to gain work experience.

I completed the ten-week college course in Interpersonal Communication that I started in January. How did that turn out? I don't have the final mark yet but I expect to have passed comfortably.  I completed 4 short papers and wrote two exams. The first half of the course was an exercise in fitting in and getting back in the grove. I quickly became aware of some major learning problems that did not exist before my health issues started. I used to read a lot and be able to easily remember what I read or heard. That is just not easy anymore. The course had a rather good textbook that was set up with an accompanying online version of the text and a lot of extra study aides available online and boy did I need them.

The teacher is a nice guy with a true desire to educate his students. 

In class there were a lot of small group activities and he managed to let me stay put and have the small group come to me so I didn't need to get up and down all the time. The class room was a very "busy" place from a sensory point of view. There was a heater going, a buzz from the lights and a lot of wiggly classmates. I picked a seat to the left side of the room near the front and that helped a lot since I seem to see and hear a lot better when the action is to my right "good" side.  I had trouble catching everything the teacher was saying, especially if he turned his back to write on the board or talked faster when he got passionate about a topic. He has his own issues with hearing loss and was understanding and more than willing to make every effort to accommodate me.

I found that, even though I usually feel like my language skills and short-term memory are adequate for everyday life now, my language skills fell apart when I needed to learn so many new terms. The course had about 25 fairly complicated vocabulary words a week and I was really struggling. I understood the concepts but word retrieval was absolutely eluding me.  Even if through some miracle I recalled the new word, I might have trouble actually articulating it during class, sort of like a stutter. 

The saving grace for me was that the online resources had a lot of games like memory matching games. …find the card with the word and march with a card with the definition. There were vocabulary crossword puzzles, vocabulary sheets, examples of videos using the skills, and practice tests for each chapter. I worked so hard!! Even with all that my recall was extremely hit and miss. The reason I will have done okay on the exams is because the exam format was multiple choice.  Aha! Apparently I can recognize the word and understand it.  On-line practice fill in the blank tests were miserable.  My midterm exam mark with multiple choice was great.

Reading the textbook was a massive challenge too. I have worked and worked over the past 4 years to get my reading level back up again but it is still difficult.  The muscles in my face do not work evenly so my left eye tracks across the page slower than my right and with a little bounce. Reading this photo rich textbook, for content, was taking me as much as 7 hours actual reading time to get through 30 pages and for every hour of reading I would need to stop and rest my eyes for another hour in order to recover from the growing headache and accompanying nausea. 

The partial solution to the reading issues was that online version of the textbook. I had my textbook open with a highlighter pen in hand and I had my computer read the words to me. [On my MAC you highlight the text you want read and then hit Option plus Escape]. I highlighted anything in the book that I needed to review later in order to work on remembering or comprehending the material. I closed my eyes and listened through examples and basic information.

The formatting style of the textbook made this difficult too. The computer reads straight down the page as printed, including tables and pictures stuck in the middle of text passages. This is also not easy because you can't take your time when reading the hard concepts -- the computer voice plods on with or without you.

I still hope to go to college and take more courses in September but I am starting to become aware of how many barriers I will be facing. I have an appointment with a Disability Counselor/ Social Worker at the college to discuss my options for modifications or assistance in the future. Next time I might not get a multiple-choice exam!

The volunteer experience component of my back to work program overlapped with the last two weeks of the college course. My ability to study and focus plummeted and fatigue won out. I am sure my second terms marks will reflect my exhaustion.

Am I glad I did the course? You bet!

I found it hard to keep to the page limit in the papers I had to write for class. I always want to write too much!

Therefore...

I will save writing about my volunteer experiences for another day!

Reading Difficulties

Reading has been a nightmare.

 I got sick when I was only a few chapters into a newly published book written by my close friend.  It was over two years before I was able to finish reading it.

I found that I could not read for more than a few minutes at a time. I was able to read words and I did know what they meant, but by the time I got through a paragraph I had no idea what I had just read.  I did not understand what was going on in the book or with myself.  I developed massive headaches anytime I tried to read.

Occupational therapy eventually explained a lot of my problems.  My damaged short term memory made it hard to recall what I had just read.  I needed to read and reread material and I often had to draw a few pictures and use a highlighter in order to follow written material.  I was not reading items to the left of the page--- I wasn't even noticing that they existed. When I had a book opened up I tended to read only the page on the right and not the one on the left. I also couldn't get my eyes to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line.

The massive headaches were at least partly related to the fact that both eyes were not tracking at the same pace. My left eye, just like the rest of my left side, was weaker than the right and the difference really showed when I was trying to do any finer eye movement.

While all this was going on I discovered that reading was far easier on the computer than reading printed text. Without even realizing what I was doing I developed a few coping strategies. I had the size of the print on my computer cranked right up. I changed the kerning on documents whenever I could. Computer articles are short compared to my books so I could manage to complete an article before my eye started to twitch and my face go into spasms. I learned to locate my lap top computer off to my right side and that seemed to help with the left side neglect.

My occupational therapist worked with me to find accommodations and exercises. I borrowed  bigger print books or used my photocopier to blow up smaller documents.  A ruler placed under each line I was reading helped me track across the page and helped me keep track of where I was on the page. I put a thin red strip of paper,  or a bright colored elastic band stretched over the book at the far left margin in order to draw my eye over to a "starting point".  I also worked on reading 5 or 6  times a day. Initially I could read for no more than 5 minutes at a time, and week by week we were increasing the time by a minute or so. Just like any other exercise, I slowly worked on building the muscle control of my eye back up again.

Last year my friend Sue published a sequel to her first book of young adult fiction. I still was not through the first one. I so much wanted to read the books and been able to discuss them with her and our friends. This past year I did read them both. I could enjoy the experience now instead of feeling mainly frustration and pain. Thank-you Susan for your understanding and for sharing all your talent!

In the past three years I have read less than I would have in a month before that. I used my limited reading ability to find books to help and support me and I have read very little fiction for fun. This past weekend I decided to read a newer Debbie Macomber romance novel while hanging out at the lake. No health and wellness related material for me for one weekend!  Once I got into the book I found out that the heroine was a lady with a severe leg injury. She works on learning to dance and ride in a paddle boat as well as work on self esteem issues related to being a disabled woman who is beginning a new relationship. So much for not thinking about disabilities. I just had to laugh.

Below are my reviews of most of the printed books I have read in the past three years.
Images are intended to give clarity and no copyright infringement is intended.



A Change of Plans: Women's Stories of Hemorrhagic Stroke
Sharon Dale Stone

Sharon Stone is a Sociology professor, and stroke survivor herself. She interviewed 11 women about their experiences after having a hemorrhagic stroke. This book was an incredibly helpful first read for me. I sat and cried through a lot of it as I realized how many of my issues were part of a stroke and not something that was a personal weakness or my fault. It was inspiring to read how these women of different ages and backgrounds coped with the consequences of their disabilities.



My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
Jill Bolte Taylor

Jill was a well known  Brain Scientist who had a stroke. She seems to have had a remarkable recovery and has taken on  a new perspective from the experience. I loved reading her detailed account of her stroke and recovery process and hearing about the support of her family and friends. I even loved her baseline biology lessons. I am not as sold on the overall right brained, left brained world view that emerges as the book progresses.  Mainly I was inspired by how she has been able to recreate herself from her former role as a biologist to that of a successful  author and speaker.




Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist
Michael J. Fox

 Michael Fox was being interviewed on all the late night shows and I felt like I needed to read what he had to say. He really does a wonderful job with this autobiography as he shares a remarkable sense of optimism. It is not a passive "lets all think happy thoughts" version of positive thinking but rather a belief that positive things indeed can happen and life can be improved and he is motivated to take action to achieve such goals. I admire this very much. At one point he quotes the Lance Armstrong Foundations Mission statement: To inspire and empower cancer sufferers and their families under the motto 'unity is strength, knowledge is power and attitude is everything'.



Stronger after Stroke
Peter G. Levine

I started off by reading Pete's blog.  I learned so much from the blog that I became interested in reading his book too. I wish I had been capable of reading this book earlier in my recovery. Pete has a lot of information about physical rehabilitation techniques that every stroke survivor should learn about and so should the people who care for them. Peter's blog and book have allowed me to gain a better understanding about stroke recovery and how it works, and a bonus is that knowledge has also helped me in my communication with my therapists. I am following many of Pete's suggestions in my efforts to maximize my recovery, and I am very glad to recommend this book to other Stroke Survivors.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Joshua Foer

This book was just what I needed to read this winter and I was surprised to find it really entertaining. OT taught me lots of memory strategies and this was like the advanced course. Josh Foer is a science writer who attended the US Memory Championships as a reporter. The following year he competed and won the competition! In this book he reviews science literature on the topic of memory in a very approachable way and he interviews many interesting people to get a perspective about memory and how it works. I have tried to use what I learned from this book and I  feel that it has been helpful to my everyday life.


The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity
William P. Young

I read this book in the past month and it is pretty different from anything I have ever read. It is being praised by some church groups and condemned by others. I thought any book that was number one on the New York Times best sellers list for 70 weeks was worth a second glance. The book was actually good to read with lots of touches of humor despite the serious nature of the topic. I would say it is one approach to the question of why bad things happen in the world. Perhaps this in not a book for everyone, but I must admit I enjoyed the book and it gave me a few theological issues to think about.  I was drawn to this book because I am a bit preoccupied with the topic of good things coming out of personal tragedies.



Withershins and Spirit Quest
Susan Rocan

Last, but not least, are my friend Susan's great books for young adults. They are time travel adventures that teach about the history of our area and touch on many current issues relevant to youth today.  There are great realistic characters in a moving historical period. I look forward to her next novel!