Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope 30 years ago today.
On April 12, 1980 Terry dipped his artificial leg into the harbor at St. John's, Newfoundland, and headed westward across this huge country. It was his intent to run from coast to coast to raise money and awareness for Cancer.
The very same disease that was spreading by the day through his body and had already claimed one of his legs.
He ended his run 143 days later near Thunder Bay when cancer had spread to his lungs. He died at age 22 in June of 1981.
People remember Terry during the many community walks and runs each September. I remember my son Dan, running in his first "Terry Fox" run at the age of nine. His class was asked to write out "who they were running for". Most of the kids wrote that they were running for Terry Fox,because he was a brave Canadian who still raises money in through his memory and foundation.
Dan wrote, "I am running for my Mom who has Cancer, and I hope this helps get her better.
Janet, his Mom, of course passed away, at the age of 49, five years after her sons first Terry Fox run.
Occasions like the recent Olympics also inspire memories, as do the 32 streets, 14 schools, numerous statues, research centers and 1 mountain named after him.
But take a moment today to remember Terry at the beginning, the first day many of us knew him.
The headline in one of our newspapers proclaimed this:
"Fox's Legacy: $451,737,662....and change"
That indeed is a lot of money but not enough.
Let's keep giving until we CURE CANCER IN OUR LIFETIME!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Finish Each Day And Be Done With It
Easter Sunday "is an occasion to celebrate redemption, restoration and renewal.
Redemption is an act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed. Deliverance from sin if you will; salvation.
I like the idea of restoration, whether it be of the personal nature, or to do with restoration of things in our lives. Fixing up of the old and perhaps broken.
On that Sunday I reflected on all of the above and moved silently and lovingly into the ever changing renewal that life offers us daily.
I did and will examine as I often do, what is broken and what I can fix, or more aptly, what the big guy can work on with me to fix.
A day after Easter Sunday, I went to one of my favorite spots to "breathe". We have a Jesuit retreat not far from our home. I have been going there for over 15 years to walk the grounds, look at the trees and sky, and watch the squirrels, chipmunks and birds "at play in the fields of the Lord".
I took Mary there on Monday. It was only her second visit since I introduced "my place of personal meditation" to her. She enjoys and gets as much benefit as I do/have.
Manresa is a Jesuit Spiritual renewal center, and lies on beautiful acreage minutes from the hustle and bustle of the city. It a jewel. An oasis that I love to spend time in. My wish is that every one of my friends that grace these pages, have one of these places that they can go to when the world seems like it is spinning out of control.
Reflection is good, but I am always careful not to beat myself up too much. I constantly question my abilities as a parent. I want the best for my son, yet I need to let go and let God.
Dan will be fine I tell myself, I just need to remember that fact.
I worry about how he views his life and the changes in the past 3 years.
Dad goes deaf, and his Mom passes away before she is 50.
Life changes as we breathe. This I learned well in the past 5 years. Life moves at the speed of life, and acceptance of change has kept me sane.
I have much to be grateful for, and sometimes a walk in Manresa just reaffirms how blessed I am.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, (attributed)
Warmest,
David
Redemption is an act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed. Deliverance from sin if you will; salvation.
I like the idea of restoration, whether it be of the personal nature, or to do with restoration of things in our lives. Fixing up of the old and perhaps broken.
On that Sunday I reflected on all of the above and moved silently and lovingly into the ever changing renewal that life offers us daily.
I did and will examine as I often do, what is broken and what I can fix, or more aptly, what the big guy can work on with me to fix.
A day after Easter Sunday, I went to one of my favorite spots to "breathe". We have a Jesuit retreat not far from our home. I have been going there for over 15 years to walk the grounds, look at the trees and sky, and watch the squirrels, chipmunks and birds "at play in the fields of the Lord".
I took Mary there on Monday. It was only her second visit since I introduced "my place of personal meditation" to her. She enjoys and gets as much benefit as I do/have.
Manresa is a Jesuit Spiritual renewal center, and lies on beautiful acreage minutes from the hustle and bustle of the city. It a jewel. An oasis that I love to spend time in. My wish is that every one of my friends that grace these pages, have one of these places that they can go to when the world seems like it is spinning out of control.
Reflection is good, but I am always careful not to beat myself up too much. I constantly question my abilities as a parent. I want the best for my son, yet I need to let go and let God.
Dan will be fine I tell myself, I just need to remember that fact.
I worry about how he views his life and the changes in the past 3 years.
Dad goes deaf, and his Mom passes away before she is 50.
Life changes as we breathe. This I learned well in the past 5 years. Life moves at the speed of life, and acceptance of change has kept me sane.
I have much to be grateful for, and sometimes a walk in Manresa just reaffirms how blessed I am.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, (attributed)
Warmest,
David
Monday, March 29, 2010
If You Could Hear What I hear!
I was sure a lion was loose in my neighborhood. While walking the dog the other morning, I heard a roar that made me jump and nervously look around for an unlikely escaped jungle beast.
There are no Lions in my town, and the zoo is 3 towns away. The “roar” I heard was a car horn.
I am deaf, yet I hear sound. I am in this unusual liminal space. I exist in this space as a result of the amazing technology of a cochlear implant.
A cochlear implant or CI is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf.
I am a “late deafened adult” by definition. I lost my hearing very suddenly, and tragically after 49 years of near perfect hearing. A major infection that saw me go from a healthy half marathon running male, to being on life support two days after a 15K run; then in a coma for 10 days.
The end result was “waking up” deaf.
It was in my recovery, and the 9 months of deafness that I researched and discovered the world of cochlear implants.
There are approximately 200,000 people worldwide that have received cochlear implants. The majority is in developed countries due to the high cost of the device, surgery and post-implantation therapy, or “mappings” as the audiologists refer to this as.
So after 9 months in my “cone of silence” or utter and profound deafness, I was “activated”, or turned on, as the magnet that sticks to the implanted device inside my skull, was “stuck” in place. It was then that I heard sound for the first time in 9 months.
Sound glorious sound!
Wonderful yes, but sound is just sound. You see this “device” or mini computer inside my head, takes the sound that is picked up through my external mic, and changes the analog sound it receives, to digital. So when some one says “Good morning David”, my mini on-board computer, changes that analog sound into a string of zeros and ones or digital code It then sends that code down an implanted wire to where there now resides 16 microscopic sized, surgically implanted electrodes. These electrodes then fire this digital code at my auditory nerve.
This of course happens so quickly that I probably receive the information at the same time it takes a “hearing” person to have the sound fired from the cochlea hairs to the auditory nerve. My new hearing method of course is all “man made”.
Not an “aid” but a hearing replacement if you will.
The surgery is complicated to be sure. They drill a hole in your skull, cut a huge incision down to the cochlea area; then through an incision behind the ear, the surgeon drills a hole into the mastoid bone. Once all the electronics are implanted, they staple you back up.
A month latter is the big “activation” day, when the anticipation is over the moon after not hearing a pin drop or an engine roar in my deafness. Once implanted, and then activated is when the real challenges begin.
The challenge is in learning what I like to call “digital sounds”, the new language that is fired at my auditory nerves once I put my magnet on.
Birds sound like an electrical buzz; phones don’t “ring” they “brang”. Car horns sound like lions to me; my dog “bracks” instead of barks; words all sound different to me than my past hearing life.
When I was “activated” 18 months ago, I had to figure out how words “sound” in my new world. I bought talking books so I could read what the word is as I heard it in my digital new language.
“Hop on Pop”, and “Is your Momma a Lama” were my first talking books, and I felt like a pre-schooler learning language for the first time.
In fact I was.
I have been learning a new language, and every day is a new adventure, a struggle most days as new voices force the brain to work harder.
I still read lips and look for clues as I struggle for comprehension of sound. New voices are like foreign languages, that need time to ramp up comprehension with.
So many people assume it is a hearing aid that amplifies sound. Not at all, it changes analog sound to digital. I hear the world different than I did when I was part of the “hearing world”
Music is simplified, and lost mostly, as my 16 implanted electrodes replaced the 180,000 odd hairs that used to fire sound from my cochlea to my auditory nerve. So I get a very simple version or facsimile of what it used to sound like.
Music is what I miss the most from my old world.
I can “hear” the sound or noise, and if I know the song from past hearing days, my brain magically backfills a lot of it, but it is not the same.
I still get life’s everyday concerto, and I am grateful for the technology that restored sound into my life, but when my son strums his guitar to a wonderful new set of chords he just learned, I smile and say “fantastic Dan”, but in fact I dearly miss the sounds he used to fill the room with.
So I still search for a box that I fit in. It is if I need a label to give people like me.
I am “deaf” once my magnet is removed at night when I sleep or step into the shower, but I do “hear” when I wake up and strap it back on and hear the sounds being fired at my brain.
I am in that liminal space of “not deaf” because I have sound, but am “deaf” because I do not hear a thing without this processor strapped on.”
So where do I fit now that I am bionic?
Perhaps I am CI-Borg.
Oh, if you could only hear what I hear.
Warmest,
David
There are no Lions in my town, and the zoo is 3 towns away. The “roar” I heard was a car horn.
I am deaf, yet I hear sound. I am in this unusual liminal space. I exist in this space as a result of the amazing technology of a cochlear implant.
A cochlear implant or CI is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf.
I am a “late deafened adult” by definition. I lost my hearing very suddenly, and tragically after 49 years of near perfect hearing. A major infection that saw me go from a healthy half marathon running male, to being on life support two days after a 15K run; then in a coma for 10 days.
The end result was “waking up” deaf.
It was in my recovery, and the 9 months of deafness that I researched and discovered the world of cochlear implants.
There are approximately 200,000 people worldwide that have received cochlear implants. The majority is in developed countries due to the high cost of the device, surgery and post-implantation therapy, or “mappings” as the audiologists refer to this as.
So after 9 months in my “cone of silence” or utter and profound deafness, I was “activated”, or turned on, as the magnet that sticks to the implanted device inside my skull, was “stuck” in place. It was then that I heard sound for the first time in 9 months.
Sound glorious sound!
Wonderful yes, but sound is just sound. You see this “device” or mini computer inside my head, takes the sound that is picked up through my external mic, and changes the analog sound it receives, to digital. So when some one says “Good morning David”, my mini on-board computer, changes that analog sound into a string of zeros and ones or digital code It then sends that code down an implanted wire to where there now resides 16 microscopic sized, surgically implanted electrodes. These electrodes then fire this digital code at my auditory nerve.
This of course happens so quickly that I probably receive the information at the same time it takes a “hearing” person to have the sound fired from the cochlea hairs to the auditory nerve. My new hearing method of course is all “man made”.
Not an “aid” but a hearing replacement if you will.
The surgery is complicated to be sure. They drill a hole in your skull, cut a huge incision down to the cochlea area; then through an incision behind the ear, the surgeon drills a hole into the mastoid bone. Once all the electronics are implanted, they staple you back up.
A month latter is the big “activation” day, when the anticipation is over the moon after not hearing a pin drop or an engine roar in my deafness. Once implanted, and then activated is when the real challenges begin.
The challenge is in learning what I like to call “digital sounds”, the new language that is fired at my auditory nerves once I put my magnet on.
Birds sound like an electrical buzz; phones don’t “ring” they “brang”. Car horns sound like lions to me; my dog “bracks” instead of barks; words all sound different to me than my past hearing life.
When I was “activated” 18 months ago, I had to figure out how words “sound” in my new world. I bought talking books so I could read what the word is as I heard it in my digital new language.
“Hop on Pop”, and “Is your Momma a Lama” were my first talking books, and I felt like a pre-schooler learning language for the first time.
In fact I was.
I have been learning a new language, and every day is a new adventure, a struggle most days as new voices force the brain to work harder.
I still read lips and look for clues as I struggle for comprehension of sound. New voices are like foreign languages, that need time to ramp up comprehension with.
So many people assume it is a hearing aid that amplifies sound. Not at all, it changes analog sound to digital. I hear the world different than I did when I was part of the “hearing world”
Music is simplified, and lost mostly, as my 16 implanted electrodes replaced the 180,000 odd hairs that used to fire sound from my cochlea to my auditory nerve. So I get a very simple version or facsimile of what it used to sound like.
Music is what I miss the most from my old world.
I can “hear” the sound or noise, and if I know the song from past hearing days, my brain magically backfills a lot of it, but it is not the same.
I still get life’s everyday concerto, and I am grateful for the technology that restored sound into my life, but when my son strums his guitar to a wonderful new set of chords he just learned, I smile and say “fantastic Dan”, but in fact I dearly miss the sounds he used to fill the room with.
So I still search for a box that I fit in. It is if I need a label to give people like me.
I am “deaf” once my magnet is removed at night when I sleep or step into the shower, but I do “hear” when I wake up and strap it back on and hear the sounds being fired at my brain.
I am in that liminal space of “not deaf” because I have sound, but am “deaf” because I do not hear a thing without this processor strapped on.”
So where do I fit now that I am bionic?
Perhaps I am CI-Borg.
Oh, if you could only hear what I hear.
Warmest,
David
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Invisible?
So I am on a bit of tirade these days. Getting pissed off at the lack of compassion and understanding for us Deaf/deaf/hearing impaired/late deafened ...whatever pigeon hole we decide to deposit us in.
I get little response on email when I launch into my canned approach of "why do you not have the ability for us hearing challenged to express our complaint ...etc" The world is built for hearing and we sadly have an invisible handicap. As much as I dread that word, I have to face up to the fact that I am challenged and I use "coping" strategies to get through the day. I am different than when I was on top of my game. I was in hearing world, master of David's universe and carried on like there was no end to the sound of life's concerto.
Well as you know, it ended like like a piano getting dropped out of the proverbial window and landed on my auditory nerves.
Now I live in new place that requires new living strategies to get the message.
I changed, but the world did not.
If you want to complain, one has to pretty much dial a 800 number in business hours of course and state your beef. Phones are a challenge for me, and if they recipient's phone is a VOIP phone (usually in some South Asian locale) I struggle.
So I ask if they can provide an email for me to send my issue.
Nine times out of ten, there are no way of sending an email to get issue resolved.
I was on a long flight recently with Air Canada from Toronto to Las Vegas. The 4 1/2 hours is killer, but it is especially long if one cannot use the many features of the in seat entertainment device to watch shows/movies/documentaries etc.
NO CLOSED CAPTION!
Why?
Do deaf/Deaf not fly?
So try and express ones disbelief at the lack of sincerity in offering closed caption for the 35 million hearing challenged in North America
We are not a small number, yet we get treated like "who cares about this group"
If I was in a wheel chair, I might get attention if the airline did nothing to help me get into my seat, or off the plane.
But because I "seem" normal, and I do hear sound through my cochlear implant, there is a prevailing attitude of "but he hears, so why is he bitching"
I hear sound, and up front and personal I can read lips and get the idea of the conversation.
Television, loud speakers, public address, radios etc etc etc, are a different story.
Closed caption is easy to do, even on a tiny airplane screen.
It seems that whatever is easy to do, is easy not to do.
Sad is it not?
David
I get little response on email when I launch into my canned approach of "why do you not have the ability for us hearing challenged to express our complaint ...etc" The world is built for hearing and we sadly have an invisible handicap. As much as I dread that word, I have to face up to the fact that I am challenged and I use "coping" strategies to get through the day. I am different than when I was on top of my game. I was in hearing world, master of David's universe and carried on like there was no end to the sound of life's concerto.
Well as you know, it ended like like a piano getting dropped out of the proverbial window and landed on my auditory nerves.
Now I live in new place that requires new living strategies to get the message.
I changed, but the world did not.
If you want to complain, one has to pretty much dial a 800 number in business hours of course and state your beef. Phones are a challenge for me, and if they recipient's phone is a VOIP phone (usually in some South Asian locale) I struggle.
So I ask if they can provide an email for me to send my issue.
Nine times out of ten, there are no way of sending an email to get issue resolved.
I was on a long flight recently with Air Canada from Toronto to Las Vegas. The 4 1/2 hours is killer, but it is especially long if one cannot use the many features of the in seat entertainment device to watch shows/movies/documentaries etc.
NO CLOSED CAPTION!
Why?
Do deaf/Deaf not fly?
So try and express ones disbelief at the lack of sincerity in offering closed caption for the 35 million hearing challenged in North America
We are not a small number, yet we get treated like "who cares about this group"
If I was in a wheel chair, I might get attention if the airline did nothing to help me get into my seat, or off the plane.
But because I "seem" normal, and I do hear sound through my cochlear implant, there is a prevailing attitude of "but he hears, so why is he bitching"
I hear sound, and up front and personal I can read lips and get the idea of the conversation.
Television, loud speakers, public address, radios etc etc etc, are a different story.
Closed caption is easy to do, even on a tiny airplane screen.
It seems that whatever is easy to do, is easy not to do.
Sad is it not?
David
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
