New Cane

My daughter came home with a new cane today.   She uses a cane at school going from class to the cafeteria, to PE, art, music and her daily VI time.    She has an orientation and mobility teacher who works with her for a bit every Tuesday, walking around the school campus, teaching her ways to discern her surroundings with the cane.

Adam, her O&M teacher, had mentioned he wanted to get her a longer cane.   She had a 30” cane with a white ball at the end.   Today she came home with a 34” cane with a red ball at the end…and get this, my daughter told us—it collapses!

Here’s what her child’s cane looks like.   There are different kinds of ends/tips you can put on them but the ball one works well for children because they don’t yet tap the cane back and forth and the ball happily rolls along as they push and pull the cane around in front of them.

Here’s the cane collapsed, something fairly easy to do as it’s held together with an elastic cord on the inside and you just pull it apart at the segments and fold it up.   When you need it again you let it go and it pops back into place all on its own.

My daughter is most excited about the red ball on the end of the cane.   I’m glad she’s liking using the cane, even though she doesn’t strictly need it in most situations.    Since her final visual outcome is still unclear, it’s good she’s learning the skills early. 

The Big Boy Update:   It is a sad day for me.    I got in the car with my son to go to school and I put on one of our favorite radio stations featuring Deadmau5.   My son and I both like Deadmau5 and he had one of the songs as his favorite song of the year for his class album last year.   But this morning he groaned and said, “Mom, Deadmau5 is so old.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter brought home some, “sentences she could read” the note said from her teacher.   I had known they were starting to use contracted braille, which is a bit like braille shorthand.   I’m glad I looked up common contracted braille words because the sentences were of three letters each and I would have told my daughter she was wrong (she wasn’t) had I not.   Think of it like this: how do you pronounce, “C D B”?   Did  you say something that sounded like, “see the bee”?   Contracted braille is something kind of like that.

Five or Six Miles:  I’m not sure, I forgot to start the tracking app on my watch.   It was something along those lines.  What’s more important is in the post-rain humidity and heat I felt almost dehydrated from the short run.