By Katherine Schneider, Ph.D.
According to AI, “Brain fitness is the practice of keeping the brain healthy and functional by optimizing neural connections, memory, attention, and problem-solving abilities.”
In case you’re wondering what will make this article different from the millions of other articles on brain fitness you can read, let me explain. I’m not recommending anything novel– diet, exercise, sleep, social contacts, hobbies, rich inner life, new experiences, etc. are all great. However, I want to talk about how to tailor your program to you, disability included.
On almost every list for brain fitness for elders, ‘keep trying new things’ is suggested—a new hobby, travel to new places, learning a new language, etc. For those of you with a new disability, you’ve got this one covered! For example, if your hearing is diminishing, you’re becoming a lipreader. Did you know that even in good light and with no masks on, still only about 40% of speech is visible? So, your brain is trying to use context clues to figure out what was just said. The author of “The Limping Chicken” (which calls itself “the world’s most popular deaf blog”) points out that “I Love You” looks the same as Olive Juice or Elephant Shoes.”)
Or if you’re losing vision, you’re learning all sorts of tricks like how to use your iPhone with different gestures when Voiceover is turned on, or how to fry hamburgers when you can’t see when they’re browned. For hamburgers and lots of other cooking, your sense of smell will help (unless you have a cold or lost your sense of smell when you had Covid).
As your abilities change, you may need adaptive equipment. You have to find it, pay for it, and learn to use it. Public libraries, county aging offices, and independent living centers may stock some adaptive equipment so you can try before you buy. Plan to pay more, and have fewer choices, than for the regular version of the item. For example, a print/Braille Scrabble set costs about $60 and there’s only one choice. If I want to play New York Times games online, only Wordle and Connections are screen reader-friendly. When I look for adaptive equipment for the blind, I check:
How do you learn all these new skills and learn about adaptive gizmos? If you can find one, join a support group for people with your disability, at least for a while. You don’t have to be of the same political party, or even the same age group, to learn from folks who have more time with the disability than you do. If you can’t find one, Google can help and at least you can find virtual support that way.
If you’re lucky, you find people who have created novel solutions to a common issue. For example, since there are only three or four books of Sudoku puzzles in Braille, there’s a small group of blind and sighted folks who take inaccessible print puzzles and transform them into Braille-ready files. If you want to help with this noble project, contact me by email at [email protected] .
Learning how to do familiar things in new ways also involves the mindset of “I’m just a small child in Disabilityland. Of course, my productions won’t be as good as they were before I developed the disability.” That’s a hard pill to swallow, so consider looking at it in terms of “at least I can still…” for part of your pondering time.
When I got bothered by how much poetry emphasizes visual imagery, I wrote the following poem:
Connections
A gentle touch from a paw, a bear hug from a friend,
A smell of leaves burning, or the fragrance of Easter lilies,
A taste of ripe pineapple or the first morning slurp of coffee.
The caws of my favorite crows and the honks of geese flying north–
All remind me that I am connected to
A big beautiful world of sounds, smells, tastes and touch;
Seeing is optional.
Socializing is a great way to keep those synapses firing, but a few extra considerations may occur if you have a disability on board. Your energy level may be lower or inconsistent. Prioritize those people you really want to be with. Set up the get-together to meet your needs—a quiet restaurant if you have trouble hearing; two hours at the all-day holiday drop-in family gathering…; if gift-giving is involved, consider the same thing for lots of folks or that standby beloved by all, a crisp bill.
When you first develop a disability, friends may rally around to help, but this may change over time. Not only do you have to adjust to receiving more help, you will need to keep track of the fact that you still have something to give. You’re not just a receiver of help. I think of friends in assisted living who “host” the gatherings; they provide the party room, and those of us coming from the outside bring the food and drink.
As I prepare for a holiday meal, I reflect on the brain fitness hacks I use:
At Thanksgiving, I was discussing the meal I’d make with a friend who recently had a brain injury. I was going to buy the cranberries from the deli at a local store but have had some issues with the fluff the local store has. As I described the fluff to my phone friend, I was trying to delineate good fluff (with lots of cranberries in it, like the store used to sell) from new fluff that is just fluffier. My phone friend said, “Oh the new kind is more mystical fluff.” My mind went into overdrive on the subject of mystical fluff and I came up with this limerick to honor my friend and the mystical fluff in all of us:
There once was a gal both kind and tough
Whose life was sometimes a bit rough.
But she got through
With guts and glue
And a little mystical fluff.
Does writing limericks get points for brain fitness? You decide.
Katherine Schneider, Ph.D. (blind from birth) is a retired clinical psychologist living in Eau Claire, WI with her tenth Seeing Eye dog. She has served on several boards including the Eau Claire County Board, the Governor’s Committee for Persons with Disabilities, and the Benetech/Bookshare Board. In addition to numerous professional papers and articles, Katherine has published a memoir To the Left of Inspiration: Adventures in Living with Disabilities, a children’s book, Your Treasure Hunt: Disabilities and Finding Your Gold, and two books for seniors (half of whom will develop disabilities in later life), Occupying Aging: Delights, Disabilities and Daily Life, and Hope of the Crow: Tales of Occupying Aging.
She originated the Schneider Family Book Awards for children’s books with disability content through the American Library Association and an award for superior journalism about disability issues through the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.
Locally, Katherine started the Access Eau Claire fund through the Eau Claire Community Foundation to help non-profit organizations work toward full inclusion of people with disabilities. She’s a passionate advocate for access for all to the good things of life, like chocolate, puzzles, and thrillers. Subscribe to her blog http://kathiecomments.wordpress.com for details.
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