blind insight

The wind blows.

Last night, I was reminded in no uncertain terms that I'm not all that tough. 'twas my first Stroke & Stride of the season, as well as my first open water swim since last August. I love the S&S series - on a hot summer Thursday it's lovely to leave work early, zip up to Boulder, and plunge into the cool Reservoir for a hard 1500m swim, then feel the water evaporate off my body during the flat and fast 5k run. The series draws some of the many top triathletes who hang out in the Boulder area, but it's limited to 200 participants each week and stays pretty low-key. Most of us are just using it to train, not to race, and there's a friendly camaraderie among the majority of us who are mere mortals.

I met a woman last year as we each struggled to put on our new and unfamiliar wetsuits. After the race, we discovered that we were neighbors, had mutual friends, and shared many interests. We're now good friends and I'll be attending her wedding this fall. And last night, when a nervous woman approached me for some tips on the swim and some guidance on how to get into her wetsuit, I felt like history was repeating itself and wondered whether she would be my next new training buddy.

A few minutes into the swim, alas, all thoughts of good will and new friends were ripped from my head and replaced by sheer panic. First, there was the cold, a gripping early-summer chill that squeezed my lungs and froze my fingers and jump-started my heart rate. Then there was the fear, that first-time-in-open water panic that seems to plague me every season, causing me to sputter and struggle and gasp and burn all sorts of energy freaking out instead of settling into a comfortable and steady stroke. As if these elements weren't enough, I scored a solid kick to the neck early in the swim, which pulled the zipper cord from the neck of my wetsuit. I flailed around a bit trying to resecue the leash, which was flapping around my arms and neck. While this awkward maneuver wore me out far more than necessary, it had the unexpected benefit of pissing me off enough to get me swimming for real.

I'm a pretty slow swimmer on a good day, and there was nothing good about last night. Still, I made it through the first 750 meter lap in a marginally acceptable time. By the time I hit the beach, the wind was raging and the water was turning to whitecaps. Feeling no great need to subject myself to further open water indignity, I decided to bag the second lap and head into the run.

One of the best things about the Stroke & Strides is that it helps me get my transition routine down. And last night certainly reminded me how important it is to practice that routine. I totally forgot that the easiest way to get the wetsuit off is to roll it down as I come out of the water, get it past my knees at my transition area, then hold it down with one foot while pulling out the other leg. Instead, my exit strategy last night involved considerably more tugging, yanking, falling over myself, grunting, and cursing. I also discovered I'd left my socks in my tri bag, and had to tear open the bag, rummage around inside, and dig out the offending item. In spite of myself, I eventually managed to get my wetsuit off and my shoes and hat and hearing aids and sunglasses on.

By this time, the wind was blowing something fierce. The pavement on the run course ends after the first 200 yards, and as soon as I hit the dirt I was subjected to a swirling barrage of gravel that felt like I imagine it might to run through fiberglass insulation. I'd hoped for a tailwind in at least one direction, but instead I was treated to a nasty-ass sidewind the whole $#@!%(*& way. My fellow runners and I grimaced at each other as we passed, then thought better of it as we received mouthfuls of grit for our efforts. I ran perhaps the slowest three miles of my career, shoulders aching from pushing into the wind, arms and legs gravel-burned and tired, muscles straining to keep me upright as the gale-force winds pummeled me from the side. At one point, I was thrown several inches to my left and almost collided with a runner heading in the other direction. A few minutes later, I was almost drenched by a towering spray of water shooting up as the waves crashed against the rocks below.

Eventually, finally, somehow, I finished. At that point, the experience became hysterically funny, and we exchanged high-fives and hugs and giggles and oh-my-gods. But there was more than one moment along the course when I doubted myself, my athletic abilities, and my sanity.

I can't wait until next Thursday!

Blindly insightless.

A friend e-mailed me a couple of days ago to ask why I haven't written about my vision loss lately. I've been thinking about it plenty, as usual, but (perhaps fortunately) I haven't had any remarkable incidents or brilliant revelations or crushing sadnesses to report. In some ways, I suppose, having a disability is a bit like having a kid but with less poop and sleep deprivation (at least in the case of my disabilities - I don't know about yours). You're stuck with it for the doo-ration, through the ups and downs and the in-betweens and the betters and worses and staying up all night wondering whether it's going to come home from the prom before daybreak or live in your basement until it's 40 or marry a Republican.

OK, maybe the analogy doesn't really work. But the point I was trying ineffectually to make is that a disability is always there, lurking somewhere in your consciousness even when you're out to dinner and the neighbor's teenager is babysitting or you've snuck off to Aspen for the weekend and left the kids at Grandma's. Whoops -- there I go with the parenting analogy again. And I don't even have kids.

In my case, my hearing loss is a stable but constant factor in my life. Every time the phone rings, I flip the switch on my left hearing aid to "t-coil," turn the volume on the phone and the aid all the way up, and cross my fingers that the person on the other line will be intelligible. Every time I go to court, I go through the same routine of picking up an infrared headset, balancing it on my aid microphones, making sure it's working, and reminding the judge and the opposing attorney to speak into the microphone. Every time I work out, I swap my "good" hearing aids for the older and more decrepit set I reserve for sweaty activities. Every time I do a triathlon, I wait until the last possible minute, then remove my aids, stash them in my bike shoes, and hope I'll remember to dry my ears during T1. What I mean to say is that the hearing loss and its accoutrements are always there, even when there's nothing particularly funny to say about them.

My vision loss is even more omnipresent, and its degenerative nature makes it more of a wild card in my day-to-day. On a typical day, I'm likely to run into at least one co-worker on my way around the office, smash into a piece of furniture in my home or office that I knew damn well was in my way even before I hit it, bump my head on an open cabinet or my shin on an open drawer or dishwasher, just moments after I, myself, not only opened the thing but also told myself to remember it was open so as to avoid doing precisely that. I'm also likely to have at least one near-miss with a car, bus, bicycle, or pedestrian on my way through the world, to knock over a glass of (hopefully just) water while gesturing emphatically, to trip over a pothole, curb, or other sidewalk hazard, and to look frantically from side to side trying to figure out who's speaking to me, only to realize the person is standing right in front of me. And at least a few times a week, I'll discover that I'm walking into something I used to see, or that someplace new is becoming a challenge to navigate.

I've reached the point of not caring anymore that my legs are covered with a roadmap of scrapes and scars and bruises, and I try to react to the mini-incidents du jour with a good sense of humor. But even as I giggle about them, my daily crashes and collisions make me cringe inside with embarrassment and frustration and sadness and fear.

So sometimes, when the whole dealing-with-the-disability thing feels pretty comfortable, and I'm feeling competent and confident in other areas of my life, I don't really have much to say about going blind. I'm not feeling glib or cavalier about it, so I can't wax sarcastic, but I'm not really feeling deep and philosophical about it, either. Plus, even though I've maybe carved out a little niche here in blogland by writing about my disabilities, I'm still touchy about being labeled or boxed in or typecast. I want to be perceived as a whole person, not just a hearing-impaired person or a going-blind person.

I guess that's why I haven't had much to say about the blindness stuff these days. Part of me hopes to stay in this place for a bit, where I'm feeling matter-of-fact and routine about it all. Because it beats the crap out of the scared-uncertain-sad-insecure place I've been known to hang out at on occasion.

Ups and downs.

This weekend provided a veritable roller-coaster of highlights and lowlights:

Up: Friday night's sushi-and-ice cream feast was an improbable but dee-licious combination. I remain impressed that my somewhat finicky-palated sweetie has taken to raw fish with such alacrity.

Down: I made the silly move of arranging a climbing rendez-vous for much too early on Saturday. I have only myself to blame for this constant state of sleep deprivation.

Up: I climbed some good stuff on Saturday, including my first outside leads of the summer (sport only, but bolt-clipping counts), and felt really strong. And I remembered all over again how absolutely gorgeous Clear Creek Canyon is - a veritable climber's paradise just a few minutes from home.

Down: Steve sometimes forgets that I can't "see fast." His faster-than-I-like lowering plus my can't-see-where-I'm-going reaction of trying to gauge my position relative to the rock equals one right hand (mine) full of bloody knuckles.

Up: Steve rigged up the snazzy new hydration system on my bike, in preparation for Elephant Rock. We're still debating whether it looks more like a weapon of mass destruction or a sex toy.

Down: I think the new Harry Potter flick was pretty good, but the @(%$#^&*! sound system in the theatre was crappy and I was only able to get about a third of the dialogue. As usual when I can't hear a movie, my mind wandered and I dozed off around the time Harry, Ron, and Hermione were turning back time to save Buckbeak from (whoops -- no spoilers here!).

Up: Despite little training, no sleep the night before, and a climbing-weary body, I had a total blast during yesterday's 50-mile ride. There were a few too many obnoxiously aggressive riders on the course, prompting me to fantasize about equipping my bike with knife blades on the wheel hubs, but most of the crowd was good-spirited and friendly, the course support was great, and I felt shockingly strong and solid on my bike. I'm feeling as fit and energetic as I have in years, and love being able to push it reasonably hard in whatever activity strikes my fancy on any given day. A plug is due here for the new PowerBar recovery drink, which not only appears to work wonders in achieving its stated mission but also tastes like Tang.

Up: Pasquini's patio, frosty Fat Tires, and an evening stroll with the Stevemeister. Aaaahhhhhhhh.

Up: Being told that my kidnapped-by-aliens voice is NOT among the top five reasons why he adores me. Hm. Guess you had to be there.

Down: Monday. It's a long way to fall.

MMPI-match.com?

At lunch with my best bud yesterday, I made a generalization about boys that had us both giggling hard. It got me thinking about another generalization, one that is perhaps slightly less gross in the milk-snortingly-hilarious sense but equally, if not more gross in the sense that all generalizations inherently are.

I've concluded that in virtually every successful romantic relationship I know, one partner is considerably more extroverted and the other considerably more introverted. There must be exceptions to this rule, and I can think of one or two off the top of my head among my own circle of friends and family. But for the most part, the best couples I know include one person who would happily go out socializing, host a dinner party, or attend some sort of gathering at the drop of a hat, and one person who would just as soon stay home most evenings or spend social time with only a few close friends. This is not to say that either half is necessarily more or less intelligent, more or less capable of smooth social interaction, or more or less interesting than the other, just that most of my more-extroverted friends and family members are coupled with people who are more-introverted and vice versa.

I've never really bought into the "opposites attract" doctrine. My relationships work best when my partner is similar to me in certain fundamental ways, like core values and lifestyle and socialconsciencehavingness and reallyphysicallyactiveness and likingspicyfoodandredwineness and bemoaningtheDHruleity. Yet while I'm not a social butterfly, I'm busy with some sort of meeting or gathering or get-together most nights of the typical week, whereas my sweetie - who (aside from being a Packer fan) meshes pretty perfectly with me in all of the aforementioned fundamental ways - prefers to hang out solo, with just us two, or with a couple of close pals. When I drag him along to various events, he cleans up nice, handles himself fine, and small-talks with the best of them. But given his druthers, we'd be wearing sandals and shorts, sitting on the patio together having a quiet dinner with a nice bottle of wine, and perhaps engaging in a vigorous debate about the latest news-making political idiocy.

Not being much of an introvert myself, I'm not sure how a relationship between two introverted people would play. My last relationship, with a man even more extroverted than I, was a whirlwind of socializing. While it seemed serious and long-term-potential-having at the time, after it ended I realized that we had spent precious few quality moments a deux. Even when we traveled to Asia together for three weeks, we had guides and drivers (and later family members and friends) with us almost constantly. And whenever we dreamed up something fun to do, one or the other of us (usually he) would come up with reasons to invite others along for the ride. Coupled with our respectively insane schedules of meetings and obligations, it seems amazing to me in retrospect that we ever saw each other alone, and not at all surprising that we failed to forge a lasting bond.

So maybe the introvert/extrovert pairing works because the two halves blend into a reasonably mellow, reasonably social whole. I know Steve helps me to calm down, focus, relax, and even sleep late from time to time (really!). I'd like to think I expand his horizons in various ways and bring out his gregarious side. Or maybe my generalization is full of more holes than Bonnie and Clyde.

Hm. I wonder which one of them was the introvert?

Conversations that make me grind my . . . gums.

My usually decent gub'mint benefits are lousy when it comes to dental work. I've shelled out big over the past couple of years for visits to my pre-job-change dentist, mostly because I like him and he comes from a really nice family that gives generously in the community and he doesn't pressure me with lots of expensive tooth-whitening treatments like so many dentists seem to these days. A couple of months ago, he told me to get some gum work done, as it seems my years-old gum grafts are again receding.

He referred me to a periodontist (let's call him Dr. Gummy), who was disturbingly young and a tad too flirty, but seemed competent and nice and didn't try to push any excess procedures on me. The work he recommended would run about $500 out of my pocket, after insurance, or so he said. I provided my insurance information when I arrived, and both the doc and his staff assured me that they had numerous patients with my coverage. The procedure was scheduled for next week.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened my mail yesterday to find an Explanation Of Benefits from my insurance company informing me that exactly none of the procedure would be covered, and that Dr. Gummy is not even on their provider list. Frustrated and concerned, I called the insurance company, which confirmed that there was no way in hell they were covering the grafts unless I used a preferred provider. Then I called Dr. Gummy's office.

The receptionist was as placid and pleasant and disengaged as can be, and we had one of those conversations-with-service-people that left me wondering whether the words leaving my mouth were actually reverberating off of her eardrums:

Me: Yes, hi, I'm scheduled to have some grafts done next week with Dr. Gummy, and my insurance company just informed me that they won't cover a penny of it.

Her: Oh, well, do you want to reschedule?

Me: Um, no, I'm trying to figure out what's happened here. When I came in for the initial consultation, Dr. Gummy told me that you had several patients on my insurance, and you gave me a sheet with the estimate for my portion of the bill. Now the insurance company is telling me that Dr. Gummy isn't even on their provider list, and that they won't pay a penny.

Her: Do you have the sheet we gave you with our estimate of your cost, or would you like me to fax you over a copy?

Me: I have it here. It says that my share would be less than $500, which is fine, because I've got some flexplan money available, but the total bill is over $2400, and I can't afford that. Now my insurance company is saying they won't pay any of it.

Her: So you don't want to have the procedure done?

Me: Well, I really need to have it done. Dr. Gummy told me the recessions should be dealt with as soon as possible, and that was two months ago. But my insurance company won't cover it.

Her: Oh, OK. We offer a 5 percent discount when there's no insurance coverage.

Me: I don't think you understand -- I can't afford this. I was told to expect to pay no more than $500, and even with a 5 percent discount, I'm looking at a couple thousand dollars here.

Her: Well then, I'll go ahead and cancel your appointment.

Me: But I really need to have these grafts done. Dr. Gummy said they were pretty urgent. I've basically lost two months because you guys told me that my insurance, for which you had all the information, would provide substantial coverage.

Her: We do offer a discount when there's no insurance coverage.

Me: I can't afford the procedure without insurance coverage. Do you think maybe Dr. Gummy could give me a referral to someone who is covered by my insurance?

Her: You can just give that sheet to the other doctor and it will tell him what work you need done.

Me: No, no, I don't have another doctor. I was hoping I could get a referral to another doctor.

Her: Just give them the sheet we gave you.

Me: Forget it.

Her (cheerily): Did you want to cancel that appointment?

I hung up the phone feeling like I'd just stepped out of the old What We Say/What Dogs Hear Far Side cartoon. And I still need to find a new periodontist.

In case you were wondering.

This weekend produced a few choice observations, which I hereby share with you:

1) If the forecast is questionable, and you thumb your nose at the clouds and go rock climbing anyway, it will not start to rain until you are halfway up the route, making a bail-out complicated and gear-abandonment-intensive. The rain will then cease until the precise moment that you begin a second attempt at the rock, when the skies will open up and the clouds will laugh as you slide off the slippery chalk-laden crack. If you abandon all further climbing efforts and retreat to the local watering hole, the sun promptly will reemerge, leaving you to ponder whether the Great Weathermaker might actively be encouraging your consumption of fermented malt beverages.

2) Should you choose to flout 60-mile-an-hour winds and go for a bike ride, be prepared to watch ribbons of your own snot fly in a sweeping arc from your nose before landing smack in the middle of your sunglasses.

3) Just because your boyfriend spends a fraction of the time you do engaged in cardiovascular training activities does not mean that he will not leave you in the dust during the second mile of the Bolder Boulder 10K race. Expect to entertain a moment or two of bitter admiration when he finishes in 7-minute pace, despite his consumption over the past three days of at least four times as much beer as you've imbibed.

4) Proper post-race hydration does not consist of Diet Sierra Mist, Michelob Ultra, or homebrew. Ingestion of such beverages is likely to lead to a world-class headache only partially curable by later consumption of large quantities of water and ibuprofen.

5) You play canasta with a Wisconsinite at your own risk. Consider yourself forewarned.