The quest for glasses

It seems that having TCS wasn't enough for me I also have poor vision. Well obviously a lot of people have poor vision so what's my point? My point is that most people don't have TCS. Now hold on I'm not complaining about this double whammy what I'm complaining about is this fashion trend of narrow rectangular glasses. With the way my eyes are I need larger frames which actually cover my eyes not these wee things. As a child I didn't have this problem but as I got older and this trend came into being it became harder and harder to find glasses that suited especially since I had to replace them every year since 1) I was growing 2) I kept on damaging my glasses in various ways, getting hit with a football was probably the main one. So rather than being able to go get my eyes tested and go to one place and find a pair of glasses we were forced to go hunting for glasses with deeper frames sometimes we would try 3 or 4 places before finding any. It has only been recently that the frames have started to become a bit deeper but last week I ended up just getting my glasses re-glazed as none of the ones I tried on in the shop suited.

Never again

Well it turned out that it was a laser treatment rather than electrolysis to remove my lower eyelashes. Wasn't very confidence inspiring to be told that there was a good chance that it wouldn't be permanent and that they could grow back, I decided to go ahead as we were there and if it worked then great. I have to say I regret this decision, I'm sure that the local anaesthetic injection (2 below each eye) was one of the most painful things I've ever endured. It was far worse than any other injection I've ever had including at the dentist. To make matters worse when the doctor finally carried out the laser treatment on some of the "flashes" it still stung so the injections hadn't even worked properly. Most of my lower eyelashes seem to have been removed but I will have to wait and see if they grow back. But if they do I will just opt for the plucking option every time I go for an eye appointment as it was mildly uncomfortable but not painful.

Eyelashes

So it seems that my appointment to get my lower eyelashes removed has finally come through. I never really planned to get them removed but at my last eye appointment the consultant said that they could be causing damage to my eyes and that I should think about getting them removed. Of course he wanted to do it right there and then and so pretty taken aback I said that I would need to think about it. He decided that he would pluck them out that day ( a temporary solution compared to electrolysis) to see if it made any difference. To be honest I'm not sure if it did but they grew back a while ago and I noticed that one could indeed be rubbing my eye and since they serve little or no purpose I might as well get them removed. Bit apprehensive about it as with all hospital related stuff but if it means my eyes don't get damaged and are less red then that would be awesome.

Pride

One of the things about having a condition such as TCS or something else which means that you are at a disadvantage compared to the average person is that you have to learn when to accept help when it is offered. This can be very hard for some people including myself, it wasn't until my final year of high school that I finally accepted what I had been offered all along which was to do my exams away from the main exam hall and with some extra time. It was only with a lot of persuasion and my chemistry teacher calling me a fool (because anyone else would take it) that I finally gave in. The same for my first year at uni, I was very sceptical about their offer of a note taker amongst other things but as I've been told many times things like that are put in place to level the playing field and even if  I don't use the note taker's notes every time they act as a very useful safety net.

But on the other hand I do not like people who actively look for "freebies" just because they have something wrong with them. I read an article in which a deaf person described how they got free tickets to a show or something because they said to the manager that they were deaf, I think this is totally inappropriate and this behaviour should not be encouraged. I'm all for equality but not to an extent where people abuse the system.

Jobs

I have to say that as bad as the job market is it is even worse if you have to narrow your options. I would quite like to get a part time job for the experience but when you take away shop assistant, waiter or any other job that requires you to be face to face with a large number of people then there is not much left. You might ask why I have narrowed my options, it is due to having TCS. All of these jobs require you to be able to listen, communicate effectively and deal with the public and I do not feel as if I could do any of these well enough. I am a good listener but when it comes to a noisy shop environment it would be difficult and if you get a customer lacking in patience then they might get annoyed if they had to repeat themselves. As for communicating effectively due to my cleft palate even people who know me and have been around me for a long time have difficulty understanding what I say sometimes and I even carried around a notebook for uni in order to write anything down if people didn't understand me (I have since realised that my phone is just as good). But this would not be very practical in a job situation. Finally dealing with the public as I spoke about in my entry-"Stop and stare" people especially children can be quite cruel with staring and even comments so I would be nervous working in a shop when it is likely that I'll have at least one incident of this.

Thanks for reading.

Hearing damage

^Awesome song by Thom Yorke^

So again sorry for the lack of updates especially now that I've had over 200 views, this blog as definitely exceeded my expectations.

One of the things I feel I should talk about is how TCS affects people's hearing, again it probably differs with each person but it is something that is clearly associated with having TCS.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a while back, I commented on how I felt bad for a girl in the year below us (who my friend was friends with) who was completely deaf and had to use sign language because she would never know what music was and my friend's response was along the lines of "you can't miss something if you never had it". This is true but I still feel bad for people who are not as lucky as me, I am eternally grateful for the fact that I can put on my hearing aid every morning and hear, which lets me enjoy music, play guitar etc.

Which is not to say my hearing aid doesn't have limitations, whilst on holiday I was again reminded how uncomfortable loud environments can be, my understanding is that people with normal hearing can tune out background noise and hence adapt to loud environments like restaurants but for me its just a big sea of sound.  Another limitation is that I cannot tell which direction a sound is coming from just by hearing it, for example if somebody shouts for me to come to them in my house I have to ask them which room they are in as I cannot physically tell.

Well that's all for now, thanks for reading.

Back in black

Sorry for the lack of updates, I felt I needed a break from this, I also couldn't update it whilst on holiday.

So anyway I'm back slightly more suntanned and definitely more relaxed than I was before. This is a short update and when I'm recovered from my long trip home I will post something more relevant.

Thanks for reading.