[humanser] Blind Women - A Review of 2 Books

Fri Oct 24 18:39:56 UTC 2014

  Are they on either Bookshare or Bard? They sound very interesting!

El 24/10/2014 01:14 p.m., JD Townsend via humanser escribió:
> BOOKS.  Young, Stricken and Determined to Fight.  By KATHERINE
> BOUTON.  Katherine Bouton is the author of 'Shouting Won't Help,'
> a memoir of adult-onset hearing loss.
>
> When they were given
> diagnoses of progressive degenerative diseases -- coincidentally,
> each of them at age 19 -- the authors of these two books reacted
> as almost any young person would, with denial.
>
> But denial can't be sustained in the face of deterioration, and
> soon enough they both took practical steps to deal with their
> ailments -- in Rebecca Alexander's case, Type 3 Usher syndrome,
> which robs the patient of eyesight and hearing; in Nicole C.
> Kear's, retinitis pigmentosa, which inexorably leads to
> blindness.  Fortunately, those steps included writing a memoir..
>
> Ms.  Kear is a writer by profession, and 'Now I See You' is a
> funny, sassy, yet poignant story.  Ms.  Alexander is a
> psychotherapist; 'Not Fade Away' benefits from the insights
> gained in her training and practice, though sometimes she seems
> to willfully ignore certain things about herself.
>
> Her story can be biblical in its tribulations.  By the age of 12,
> she is already going blind.  At 19, her deafness is confirmed.
> Her parents get a divorce, which devastates her.  She develops a
> severe eating disorder.  Her twin brother, Daniel, has bipolar
> disorder and doesn't respond to treatment.  Her boyfriend gets
> cancer.  She has tinnitus that takes the form of auditory
> hallucinations: a woman screaming at night, a jackhammer.
>
> In spite of all this -- or maybe because of it -- she is driven
> to succeed in everything.  She pushes herself to grueling
> physical feats: As a teenager at summer camp, she sets off at 3
> a.m.  for a five-mile swim across a lake.  In her early 20s, she
> trains for a weeklong AIDS-benefit bike ride from San Francisco
> to Los Angeles.
>
> She runs marathons and teaches spin classes.  She goes to Machu
> Picchu with her mother and climbs the treacherous Inca Trail: 'My
> lack of peripheral vision made it easy to block out the deadly
> fall that you could take on either side.
>
> She pushes herself professionally as well.  She gets a double
> M.A.  from Columbia in psychology and public health.  She trains
> as a psychoanalyst and sets up a successful private practice.  As
> her former boyfriend Alan Pinto (now recovered from cancer and
> still her best friend), tells New York magazine, 'I think she
> keeps going 100 miles an hour to not have to process it all.
>
> Or as Ms.  Alexander, 35, writes in her memoir: 'If there's one
> thing you absolutely need with a disability like mine, it's
> resilience.  I'm not talking about strong will and zest for life,
> either -- but pure physical resilience.  When you are going blind
> and deaf you are basically an accident waiting to happen.
>
> And happen they did.  Just before she left for college, she fell
> out of her second-story bedroom window, mistaking it in the dark
> -- and a drunken stupor -- for the door to the bathroom.  She
> broke virtually every bone in her body in the 27-foot fall onto a
> flagstone terrace, except for her neck and her head.  The
> accident -- and her recovery, which left her with a limp --
> taught her 'something integral to who I am today,' she writes,
> 'the perseverance I would need every day of my life.
>
> Family and friends are essential.  Both her mother and her
> stepmother, Polly, are unfailingly supportive, as is a younger
> brother, Peter.  Polly gives her a wall calendar to help her keep
> track of medical appointments.  'Even that small gesture from
> her, having me be the keeper and organizer of my own schedule,
> was important to me,' Ms.  Alexander writes.  'So little was in
> my power.
>
> A cochlear implant ensures that she will never be deaf.  But even
> after countless hours of listening therapy, the sound is 'a bit
> distorted and will never sound like natural hearing to me.
> Still, she continues, 'it is much more crisp and clear than the
> hearing I get with the help of a hearing aid.  As someone who has
> also struggled with a cochlear implant, I think Ms.  Alexander
> may someday find that it sounds like natural hearing.  The brain
> is endlessly adaptable.
>
> Toward the end of the book, she talks about her hesitation to
> have children -- her worry that she couldn't take care of them or
> that they might feel the need to take care of her.  She might
> want to read Nicole Kear's book.  Ms.  Kear, 37, has raised three
> children as she's gone progressively blind, making accommodations
> -- cleaning out clutter, using a cane -- but never, as far as I
> can tell, being a burden.
>
> These two authors are remarkable women, overcoming almost
> inconceivable difficulty at a very young age.  Their stories are
> inspiring.  But as Ms.  Alexander says, what choice is there?
> 'People often tell me I'm an inspiration,' she writes.  'I'm
> never sure what to say.
>
> The same thought recurs during one of the obtuse encounters that
> are a wearying part of daily life.  When she explains to a
> station agent that her dog is a service dog, he replies, 'You
> don't look like a disabled person.
>
> 'At this point, I'm never sure what to say,' she writes.  'Um,
> thanks?
>
> Not Fade Away:  A Memoir of Senses Lost and  Found.  By Rebecca
> Alexander  with Sascha Alper.  Gotham  Books, 308 pages.  $27.;
> Now I See You:  A Memoir..  By Nicole C.  Kear.  St.  Martin's
> Press.  275 pages .  $25.99.
>
> JD Townsend, LCSW
> Helping the light dependent to see.
>
>
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-- 
Enviado desde mi lap
Gerardo J Corripio Flores Psicólogo, Terapéuta Reiki
Saludos desde Tampico, Tamaulipas México
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