I got up early this morning and so got in my full exercise routine.
I had no Berlitz lessons scheduled for today at all, and so I didn't teach. I did get some work done, however, on my music, in particular my arrangement of Eli Eli for orchestra.
I received two phone calls with good news for David today. The first was one scheduling a couple of appointments for him at the dental office (unfortunately in Tel Aviv) to get his dental work repaired. It broke less than 2 years after they did it. The first appointment will be next Wednesday.
The second call was to let me know that David's approval for getting a Braille Writer with the 90% discount has arrived at the Center for the Blind in Israel, and so I was able to order that and a few other things for him. He's really excited about that!
We ate lunch at a small eatery called מקסיקני Meksikani ("Mexican") today. I had seen an ad for it in one of the advertising magazines. It was pretty good, but not quite what one would find in California. At least the large flour tortillas and the guacamole were pretty accurately done.
In the evening, we went over to Ice Park for frozen yogurt. We stayed for the 6:00 p.m. ice dance show. I stood right by the railing of the rink to watch it. The two people, a Hungarian guy and an English girl, do pretty much the same routines (separately) each time, but with somewhat varied costumes and different music. I still enjoy watching every time, though.
Today marks a full year of David's blindness, so I'm going to say a few words about him and give a bit of an update. First, we now believe in retrospect that he had actually begun going blind BEFORE 1 August of last year, but we both had written off the symptoms as problems with glare from the bright sun (which is, of course, very bright here!) and as problems with his 2 eyes working together due to the cataract removal from the left one in October of the previous year.
However, it was 1 August of last year that it finally became clear that he wasn't actually seeing ANYTHING! The problem has NEVER been with the eyes themselves, both of which were checked repeatedly by at least 4 or 5 different eye specialist during that first week. There is also no known cause in his brain, by which we only mean that nothing showed up on cat scan or MRI. Nevertheless, it's clear that the problems HAS to be something in the brain or nervous system.
It's not quite accurate to say that David has seen nothing for the entire year. In fact, on some days he HAS be able to see to some degree. But it is hard for even HIM to gauge exactly how much and what he sees. These things are simply not as straightforward as one with no experience (like myself) might assume. And whatever vision he has gotten back has never been reliable. Often, after having been able to see some for a day or part of a day, he finds that he can't see again.
While we are, of course, thankful for any improvements, this up-and-down seesaw is not particularly gratifying, to say the least. We keep hoping that the trend will be upward, but this is not always the case. Today, for example, he could hardly see at all after having had a pretty good day yesterday. This uncertainty is also the main reason we haven't said much about this previously. And, for the same reason, it may be a while before I update you again.
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