Well, it's a little after 6am on Sunday morning, and I'm reading what I type with newly re-invigorated eyes.
I managed to wake up yesterday morning, and not open my eyes, stumble my way to the shower, and thankfully we've been staying here long enough, that all my personal hygiene items were easy enough to find in the bathroom and shower recess.
I managed to get through the whole day with only tripping over one thing, which was the dust pan, which the cleaner left on the living room floor while she was doing the bathroom. Granted that I didn't spend a great deal of time wandering around.
Not speaking was not too difficult either, although I did speak once, and that was to explain my appearance to the cleaner who had said good morning and asked me what I had done to myself. Given that my response was as short as "Morning! No, no, it's just an experiment", I consider that I still managed to achieve the aims (in general) of not speaking.
Now......what was it like not seeing for the day? It wasn't as traumatic as I'd been told it could be. Being that I've been living in this suite for nearly 6 weeks, I knew the layout of it well enough to get around it without too much fumbling. I'd pre-made some sandwiches to get me through the day, and also stocked up on snacks to keep me occupied, but I still found that I was able to find the ingredients that I needed and with reasonable success make myself some cheese and margarine on toast when I got up (the cheese was pre-sliced).
One thing that I did notice about lacking vision, was that things that I find a little annoying normally, without the distraction of vision, I found even more annoying than usual. One of the people I live with, who I normally find quite abrasive walked in while I was sitting on the sofa, and without any prompting stated quite abruptly "I'm not going to ask! If you want me to ask, I'm not going to!".
This was the only point during the day that I actually wanted to speak so that I could tell him that whether or not he was aware of, or understood, what I was doing was not my concern, and my experiment was about me, not him. He also managed to make a few more idiotic comments during the course of the day, which normally I would not have noticed, but with nothing to look at but the back of my eyelids, I heard them, and then couldn't help but think about them. Interestingly enough, I also heard him asking one of the other boys we live with "What's going on with the prisoner of war"....so despite his assertions that he wasn't going to ask.....it would appear he failed.
I know wonder how people with head injuries put up with wearing bandages round their heads! I had to remove my bandage 4 or 5 time throughout the day, and re-adjust it about a dozen times to stop it pressing on my ears/itching my face/pressing the back of my head (the list just keeps on going so I'll finish there).
I also had to put a pair of small socks over my eyes (under the bandage) for most of the day, as I noticed that the bandage wasn't blocking all of the light, and I was able to get more of an idea where I was in the room by the way bright light seems to shine red through your eyelids.
One of the things that I couldn't help but think about, was how dependant blind people must be on others, for simple things like grocery shopping and then placing the items in certain places so that the blind person could find them. Then any time you wanted to do something outside, you'd need a companion to make sure that you didn't fall into gutters/run into anything etc. The dependency on other people would initially have to make you feel so out of control, and to a certain degree weak. I now have so much more respect for the struggles and trauma that the vision impaired have to contend with on a daily basis.
Finally, I must have done something good for my eyes by giving them the longest break they've had in 36 years, because when I woke up this morning, they weren't nearly as red as they normally look :)....ahh happy days.
On the not speaking front. That was an interesting experience. I'm so used to interacting with the people around me, even in the simplest of ways by saying hello, that it was very strange to me to have to ignore that people where in the room with me. My main communications with the boys that I'm currently living with were waving to say hello or goodbye, or pointing at my watch to ask the time. A few times I scrawled as best I could on paper to ask/say specific things, but generally I tried to avoid doing that, so that I could experience the true lack of means of communications.
Generally the guys I live with were pretty good and kept their attempts at conversation to things that I could answer with a thumbs up or thumbs down, but of course the human sandpaper felt the need to ask idiotic questions that were unnecessary, couldn't be answered easily and that he generally would have known the answer too had he listened to the general conversation in our suite over the past week.
The combination of no vision and no speak made me feel a little as though I was in a glass cage, with everyone being able to look in and have an affect on me, but me not being able to get out and have an affect on them. It wasn't a bad experience, just one that gave a very good insight into the lack of control of self within surroundings.
Well, that's my experience of no sight/speech, and that's two more items off my list complete. I suppose I should really dedicate some time to adding the remaining 59 items to the list.......at this rate, I'll have finished what I have on the list before I've finished the list.
Have a great week Friends.
:)
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