blind insight

Splish splash!

When we moved into our house, we discovered that the inspector had missed something significant. Our bathtub looked like this:

As you can see, not-so-subtly concealed under the icky blue bath pillow and the nasty tub mat are some pretty gaping holes in the enamel. Don't think they're that bad? Take another look.

Gross, huh? Apparently, the tub was originally that lovely salmony color, until someone did a half-assed job of covering it with enamel paint. Which is now peeling off in chunks.

Needless to say, we've not been terribly thrilled about this eyesore, particularly because it can't be fixed with more enamel paint, and replacing the entire tub is an extremely messy and costly job. So, almost every morning, I cringe and groan and whine about my nasty tub, as I fish more and more flakes of enamel out of the drain.

Sure, I've spent days and days in the backcountry without a shower. I've stayed in remote corners of the world, where bathing water is heated by the sun and available only sporadically. That was part of those experiences, and it didn't faze me (although discovering the GIANT cockroach that had perched itself on my shampoo bottle in an Israeli hotel shower did make me jump). But having to look at the gaping holes in the enamel of my very own bathtub, every morning during my daily ablutions? That, I can't stand.

For a while, we resigned ourselves to living with the grossness until we eventually remodel the bathroom. But then Steve's parents pointed us in the direction of Bathfitter, the wonderful people who would put an end to my misery. A month ago, they came out to measure our tub for a shiny, new liner with a lifetime guarantee. And today, they installed it over our oogy old tub.

I can't wait to take a shower - or even, for the very first time since we moved into this house, an actual BATH!

I forgot to tell you....

. . . that I took the CI to the movies on Saturday night. We saw the boundlessly charming Little Miss Sunshine, and I could hear EVERY WORD. Being able to hear and appreciate this hilarious, quirky, wonderfully written and acted movie made it all worthwhile.

Also, Steve was very impressed that I actually stayed awake for an entire movie. It's amazing how much longer my attention span is when I know what's happening!

A plea for help to save my sight.

On September 30, Steve, my parents, and I are participating in The Foundation Fighting Blindness' inaugural Visionwalk in Denver.

We're calling our team Usher's Mushers, because (as you probably know if you've been reading here) I suffer from Usher Syndrome. Usher is a particular form of retinitis pigmentosa (RP), characterized by moderate to profound hearing impairment, and progressive vision loss due to RP.

The FFB's mission is to drive the research that will provide preventions, treatments and cures for people affected by RP, macular degeneration, Usher syndrome, and the entire spectrum of retinal degenerative diseases.

For me, personally, the FFB's research gives me great hope that a cure or treatment will be available before I lose my sight completely.  As my vision worsens incrementally year by year, I know only too well how urgent the FFB's mission is for me and thousands of others.

I would very much appreciate your support for our walk.  We have set a team goal of $5,000.00. You can make a tax-deductible pledge online by clicking here.

Any amount you can give  - no matter how small (or large!) - will help the vital work of the FFB. With enough support from our family and friends, we may even win the "flying pig award," which will be given to the teams in the Family, Corporate, and Individual categories that raise the most money for this event. The award is so named because FFB will not wait until pigs fly to find a cure for blindness!

If you're local and would like to walk with us, we'd love to have you join our team! Please let me know if you'd like to become a fellow Musher; the sign-up information is provided on the website linked above. Thank you very, very much for your support!

UPDATE: As of the end of August, we've raised over $3300.00, including quite a bit of support from blog readers! We are leading the race for the flying pig award, and, more importantly, are raising a lot of sight-saving research dollars. Many, many thanks to all of you who have contributed so far.

An A.

The three-month results are in, and they are GOOD! I scored 94% in the sentence recognition test, 84% for sentences with background noise, and 68% on the rapid-fire, one-syllable words. All tests were conducted with both my CI and my hearing aid.

For comparison's sake, my one-month scores were 81%, 21%, and 20%, respectively, with just my CI, and 91%, 76%, and 44% with both ears.  So, some definite improvement. I am now testing in the normal-to-mild-loss range, which is very exciting.

We also tweaked the map, and things are sounding noticeably sharper now.  The CI/hearing aid sound blend is nearly complete, too. Barring any unforeseen problems, I won't see my audiologist again until mid-November.

It's almost mind-boggling to consider how significantly my hearing has improved in just three months. I can now say without the slightest reservation that getting this device was the right decision, and has improved my daily life.

PS: keep those battery-using ideas coming - they're great!

A contest!

My cochlear implant uses three batteries, compared to the single battery that powers my hearing aid. The CI burns through those batteries every two to three days, whereas the hearing aid goes at least a week between juice-ups.

Cochlear has released a rechargeable battery, but I am waiting until 2007 (when I will have more money available for pre-tax medical reimbursements) to purchase one. For now, I'm still popping batteries like breath mints.

A couple of months ago, Steve suggested that I save the dead batteries, rather than tossing them in the trash. He thought he might "do something" with them. What, he wasn't sure. As the weeks have passed, and the pile of batteries has grown, neither of us has come up with any brilliant ideas.

And so, I'm turning to you. If you are unfamiliar with standard size 675 hearing aid/CI batteries, they look like this: 

The photo is pretty close to actual size (ignore the blue thing, which is the plastic tab that protects the batteries before you use them).

What should we do with this little gizmos? Get those creative juices flowing!

On a roll!

On Thursday, I won again! Particularly because being "the habeas person" essentially makes me the Patron Saint of Lost Causes of the indigent defense world, this recent run of appellate success has really recharged my batteries.

Someday, I'd like to actually win substantive habeas corpus relief for someone - that is, a new trial, or release from confinement.* But I am very pleased to at least be securing some procedural victories for my clients. Habeas cases are far more likely to rise or fall on procedural matters, anyway, so If I can help make good law on that side of things, I'm ensuring that more prisoners' claims will receive merits consideration from the courts.

In this business, we take what we can get!

*I have, in fact, won a few cases on the merits, but not recently.

The Merchant of What? Where?

I love Shakespeare, particularly his more raucous comedies. But I hadn't been to see live Shakespeare in years, due both to lack of time and to growing frustration with my inability to hear and understand the actors. When my mom suggested we attend the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's rave-reviewed Merchant of Venice, for my dad's birthday, I accepted with considerable enthusiasm, tinged with a bit of uncertainty as to how the CI would fare in this new setting.

And . . . it sucked. Not the play, which apparently was quite good, but the CI. I tried adjusting volume, sensitivity, and program, and nothing helped. I could tell that I was hearing more than I would have previously, because at one point I took the processor off and could barely hear a thing from the stage. But I couldn't understand much at all. There were one or two actors whose voices were particularly clear (Bassanio; the foiled suitors), and I could both hear and understand their words beautifully. The rest of them, though, might as well have been speaking Urdu (or Italian, for that matter), given how few of their lines I could comprehend.

The performance was lively and very physical, so I did my best to follow along without the benefit of the iambic pentameter to guide me. Unfortunately, the futile effort of trying to hear taxed my already fatigued brain, and I ended up dozing dozed through much of the first half, and nearly all of the second.

In short, the CI flunked the theatre test. Next up, the movies.

Race Report - Tri For The Cure

In celebration of Michelle, Barb, Fish, and all the other amazing women who've survived breast cancer, a whole group of us took on the Denver Tri for the Cure on August 6. Buoyed by blissfully cool and the erev-race-day Guinness and onion rings I shared with Barb, I managed a personal record (for this course, at least). Though my time won't exactly put me in the Big Leagues, I was pretty darn pleased to finish in under 90 minutes.

To recap briefly. The swim: fast-ish, despite the tangle of bodies from which I could never quite break free, my completely fogged goggles, and the nearly invisible dark-green caps assigned to my wave. The bike: fast and fun, punctuated by the game of leapfrog I played with KC. The run: speedy (for me) and strong, made all the better because I spotted Steve beaming at me, just as I headed out of the transition area. The upshot: awesome! In fact, everyone in our little posse of tri-buddies finished this race considerably faster than they had at Danskin, with a lot less pain and suffering in the process.

I seem to have had a bit of a breakthrough in the midst of doing three races in four weeks. Somewhere along the line, I finally learned how to push myself harder. I suppose it sounds silly, but because I am not much of a natural athlete, and do triathlons and similar events mostly to stay fit and to finish, I've never learned quite how to pace myself so that I can maximize my effort without bonking. Instead, I plod along at my only-slightly-better-than-average pace, usually enjoying myself but feeling a bit disappointed in my only-slightly-better-than-average results. Back when I was running a lot, I finished 10Ks, half-marathons, and a marathon all at approximately the same pace.

But with so many races, so close together (plus the Stroke & Strides every Thursday evening, as well), I started to find a rhythm and a focus that I'd been lacking over the past few seasons. At least in the shorter swims, I managed to pick up the tempo and shave significant seconds off my times. And in the run, I did a bit of speed work, started concentrating on my pace and my stride, and willed myself to make my sluggish legs move faster, faster.

In the end, my times are still solidly unspectacular, but they're improving. For example, I finished in the top 17% overall at Boston, but the top 10% at Tri for the Cure, with a one-minute faster pace at the latter race, though its swim and run courses both were longer (its transitions, on the other hand, were slightly shorter). Probably more important, I feel stronger, faster, more competent, and more motivated.

I have one race left this season, the low-key Louisville tri at the end of August (my only triathlon of the season with Steve). But the wetsuit is retired for the winter, the bike's going back on the trainer, now that it's too dark out in the mornings to ride outside, and I'm starting to think about getting my skis waxed. Hm. Maybe I can translate this new push-myself thing into a stronger, faster Kortelopet in February!

Another one for the W column.

Consider this a placeholder post. Things I promise to tell you about include my great race last weekend, the first, largely unsuccessful meeting between my CI and the Bard, and how incredibly happy I am that it's August, which means that I'm actually staying in my very own house for three straight weekends.

Since I don't have time to write about any of it now, here's something else to read, guaranteed to induce drowsiness unless you're an even bigger habeas geek than I am. For those of you playing along at home, this decision keeps my 2006 record above .500. Perhaps the Rockies will call?

Precious.

It was bound to happen. He wore it a bit on the loose side, he took it off for climbing, cycling, and when it bothered his finger, and we'd never gotten around to finding a neck-cord for it. Steve's wedding ring, that is. His huge, gold, elvish-inscribed wedding ring, which he lost while inner-tubing in Boulder Creek on Saturday.

Steve was pretty devastated by the loss, so he hired a search-and-rescue diver to hunt for it last night. After four hours of combing the creek bed in the area in which Steve thought the ring had dropped, they called off the search.

While the ring was custom-designed and the Tengwar engraving was hand-done, it is replaceable. The local jeweler who made it assures me that he has all the information from my original order and can recreate the ring without much ado. Perhaps we will have a ceremony of sorts when the new ring arrives. Maybe I can even wear my wedding dress and get my hair done and hire a band and get a giant decadent cake and convince my girlfriends to dress up in matching outfits and . . . well, OK, maybe not. But we'll do something to make the moment memorable, even if it can't quite measure up to that magical day, just about 11 months ago.

And maybe, just maybe, years and years from now, a furry-footed Hobbit will pluck something shiny from the riverbed . . . .