A quick update: After weeks of visiting a wound clinic, the  wound is healing (one word: Medihoney). My wound and I are on much better terms with one another now and a  cortisone shot allows my arthritic big toe on my right foot to, you know, move and stuff. I still use a walking stick, but mostly just to signal to fellow pedestrians and to drivers that hey, this is as fast as I can go right now. And my back spasms—due mostly to walking crooked for months—are improving thanks to physical therapy.

Speaking of which, PT has been a godsend for me several times now. It’s so practical, and I learn so much about how my body works, that I always think of Beth’s comment about PT: How come we don’t learn a bunch of this starting in elementary school? Sort of a practical anatomy course? Probably somebody in Florida would find it improper.

I’m lucky, because the Athletico I go to is all of a block away, so I don’t have to miss much work at all. I don’t mind the hour—I’m pretty good about doing exercises at home but it’s good to have a professional monitor my form and keep tabs on things. I do wonder if there’s a physical therapy laboratory somewhere that churns out PTs, controlling for genetics and only turning out extremely perky, energetic, and upbeat professionals.

My latest perky PT left me with an unforgettable line during my first visit. After a rapid fire explanation of an exercise (which, for the record, I was able to follow even in my dotage). “I’m a millennial,” she said, “so I’m sorry if I’m talking too fast.”

I’m doing my best to keep up.

Also, I’ve had mental health therapy now for decades off and on. It first started when Gus moved away and I found myself completely at sea. Once again the wise Beth Finke persisted until I said, OK, I guess so.

It was a good decision, and although the names and faces have changed, it’s kept me less nuts and difficult than I would’ve been without it. I’m downright pleasant at times. I think.

A couple months ago I got a call from a representative of our insurer. She asked how I was doing (probably while looking at the roster of appointments I’d been to) and whether I’d be interested in a counseling program they offer for pain management. She had me at “it’s free.”

So for eight weeks I saw a therapist one morning and a coach another. They had sort of a canned cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) program. It was a little rote but was largely helpful, even though at some sessions, I heard more about a therapist’s recovery from surgery than my own plight. But I was glad to help.

So on alternating weeks I actually saw three people. It was hard to keep them all fed.

(On the subject of CBT, our dear friend and sometime blog contributor Regan Burke tipped me off to a terrific little tool when it comes to pain management. It’s called The Pain Management Workbook, and it, too relies on CBD and mindfulness to help one manage pain. If you or someone you know deals with pain—chronic or otherwise—I highly recommend it.)

I’m thankful to all the people out there who’ve made it their lives to help the likes of me and others. And for your patience—I’ve sort of broken a pact by disappearing for these past months, but, like it or not, I’m back.

Last Friday Luna and I presented a special program for third-graders from a school where more than half the students are children of immigrants. Goudy Elementary is located so close to The Admiral at the Lake (a retirement community where I lead weekly memoir-writing classes) that they can walk there. They do exactly that every Friday to attend a reading buddies” program at theAdmiral. Each third-grader reads out loud to an assigned Admiral resident, their “reading buddy” and the Admiral Reading Buddy reads aloud to their third grade buddy, too.

Last Friday, though, things were a little different. The Admiral invited Luna and me to come give a special presentation to the Goudy third-graders about what it’s like to be blind and work with a Seeing Eye dog. The afternoon was delightful, and so were the children. Many of them had read my book Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound and arrived with a question on a card to ask me when it was their turn. Every single child told me their name, then introduced their question a la, “Hello, my name is Sunil, and here’s my question …”. Their older reading buddies were sitting further away, so I made a point to repeat each question so they could hear it, too. Some examples:

• What’s your dog’s favorite toy to play with?
• What are your biggest challenges if you’re blind?
• How does your dog know where he’s going?
• Does your dog understand English?
• Can your dog bark?
• How old is your dog?
• How old are you?
• Do you like cats?
• What’s your dog’s favorite game to play with you when you’re at home?
• What if your dog forgets to stop when it gets to the curb?
• How do you know what you’re wearing?
• Does your dog help you in the kitchen when you are cooking, too?
• If you had to walk lots and lots and lots of blocks to get somewhere, would you just ask someone to drive you there?

That last question gave me the opportunity to introduce all the kids to the friend who had driven Luna and me to the Admiral that day to give the presentation: my friend Ruth was there in the back, taking it all in. Weeks earlier Ruth happily agreed to go 50-50 with me so that each of the 50 children in Admiral’s Reading Buddy group would go home with a copy of my new Service Dogs book. The Admiral resident who emceed last Friday’s presentation last week sent me a email message thanking us for last week’s program and apologizing for not taking time to talk about the books that Ruth and I donated. “But I want you to know that when I held up the books to show the kids, they were so excited and happy!”

No apologies necessary there. Just thinking that some of those third-graders might have brought their new Service Dogs book to read to their Reading Buddies when they walked over to the Admiral today makes Ruth and me happy and excited, too!

Luna and I had a great time at Oak Terrace.

This past Tuesday Seeing Eye dog Luna and I had the honor of visiting third-graders at Oak Terrace Elementary school in Highwood, Illinois to talk about what it’s like to be blind and how service dogs help us get around.

Oak Terrace is a Spanish dual language school: students there are provided daily instruction in both English and Spanish. I am no expert in the benefits of bilingual education, but based on some of the words the kids used when asking questions, I’d say it really helps with vocabulary! Some examples:

• • Did you just wake up one day and all you could see was black?
  • Did you have previous experience with any other dogs before you got your first Seeing Eye dog?
  • How do you eat, I mean, how do you use utensils?
  • Were you terrified when you woke up and all you could see was the color black?
  • How do you play video games?
  • How do you eat when your husband isn’t around to cook?
  • What if there’s a natural disaster?
  • How do you swim without running into the wall at the end of each lap?
  • How do you use the bathroom?
  • Do you choose what to wear, or do you just pick your clothes at random?
  • How do you drive?
  • What happens when your dog retires?

”At random?” “Terrified?” “Natural disaster?” “Previous experience?” “Utensils?” What sort of eight-year-olds use sophisticated language like that?

Eight-year-olds who go to dual-language schools, I guess. Hearing both languages spoken there was music to my ears. When it was time to leave, I leaned down to pick up Luna’s harness, stood back up and used one of the very few sentences I know in the Spanish language: “Mi perro es muy intelligente!” The cheers from the third-graders tell me I must have gotten it right.

The museum provides a moving, solemn experience.

A lot of you have been asking me how everything went during my Tuesday visit to the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie. The Visitor Experience Coordinator there (along with a museum consultant) invited me to come Tuesday to take a tour and do an accessibility review and walk-through of the museum on behalf of people who are blind–all part of a much-appreciated effort to make the museum more accessible to people with disabilities.

In a word, the whole experience was … overwhelming. Knowing this would be the case, they included this reassuring paragraph in the initial invitation:

We realize this is a long day and difficult subject matter. We’ll take breaks as needed that may include coffee breaks, fresh air outside, or anything else you may need.

Disclosure: I asked to be helped outside once, during the live presentation by a holocaust survivor. Thinking about that now, I’m kind of ashamed. Here I could just leave and get away from it for a bit. People in concentration camps didn’t have that option.

But let’s start at the beginning. Before our tour began I was introduced to Maureen, a lively and engaging woman who is deaf and has a cochlear implant. She had been invited to assess the museum from her point of view.

We were told right from the start that the entire museum is built of rough concrete to give visitors a sense of how harsh the holocaust experience was. “Could you lead me to one of the walls so I could feel it?” I asked, giving Seeing Eye dog Luna the “follow” command so I could get a sense of just how big and rough each square of concrete is.

Every room at the Museum felt cold and stark, which I learned later was the late architect Stanley Tigerman’s point: he wants visitors to feel a sense of foreboding while walking through the exhibits. A cool idea, except for this: most of the rooms are so large that they echo like crazy. Many have multiple video screens hanging on the walls that I assume featured holocaust survivors telling their stories, but with so many playing — and echoing — at once I couldn’t hear the narrators.

Neither could Maureen, who said that one of the worst situations for her to be in is one where two different voices are talking at once. The videos do have captions, though, so she was able to read them to keep up.

The Visitor Experience Coordinator and the Museum Consultant were with us the entire time, welcoming our comments, asking questions and taking notes. “Would it help if we had a sign that said that in Braille?” “Can you tell the floor is slanted downward when you’re walking here?”

They gave helpful explanations of the photos, artwork and artifacts hung on the walls, but any time I reached out instinctively to touch one, I’d get the same three-word response: “It’s under plexiglass.” Made perfect sense. The items were all precious, important parts of history. Knowing me, I would have dropped one of them!

Seeing Eye dog Luna led me through some of the exhibits, and the Visitor Experience Coordinator led me sighted-guide through others. The one thing that was easiest for me to take in was the hologram – only one screen in that room and no problem hearing the monologue.

We all sat down after the tour to throw out some suggestions of ways to make the exhibits more accessible, places where audio description could work, exhibits that could use more captioning, and how and where tactile maps might be helpful. The Visitor Experience Coordinator and the Museum Consultant thought it might be a good idea to form a Disability Advisory Committee of people with disabilities to meet quarterly. “You know, they might have other advice and ideas to share about accessibility.”

I am  ever so appreciative of the efforts the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is going through to make their space accessible to all. And bonus points to them for getting answers to their questions right from the experts: people who have disabilities!

Check out the museum website.

This Tuesday, April 11, I’ll be one of a group of people with different disabilities doing an accessibility review and walk-through of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Illinois.

It’s going to be a long day: the review and walk-through starts with an orientation at 9 a.m. followed by an explanation of the Accessibility Advisory Committee. We’ll walk through the exhibition spaces together and then share our feedback of the experience and answer questions like “What is accessible to you?” “What needs improvement?”

In addition to walking through the exhibitions, we’ll hear part of a program with a holocaust Survivor and try an interactive hologram where we can ask questions of a hologram of a Survivor.

It’s an honor to be asked to participate in accessibility reviews like these, especially when the organization understands that making museums and cultural centers accessible to people with disabilities help everyone. And the staff at the Illinois Holocaust Museum does understand that. From the invite they sent: “We strongly believe that having a group of people discuss accessibility with us is one of the most valuable ways to understand how to improve the museum experience to accommodate all visitors.”

The invite acknowledges that the review “makes for a long day and difficult subject matter” and assures us we’ll take breaks as necessary, including coffee breaks, fresh air outside, or anything else we may need.

It’s sure to be an interesting day.

Hats off to our neighbor Ruth: without her offer to drive Luna and me to the Illinois Holocaust Museum Tuesday morning, I wouldn’t be able to participate in this important project.