Skip to main content

Password, Please!

Have you ever had password problems,? If you're online, the answer is probably yes. You go through your litany of passwords until you're locked out, happen onto the correct one, or you have to reset and pick another from your litany or, God forbid, you have to make up a new one! It can be a test of patience for an able-bodied person but consider the challenges to the physically-impaired.

I have A.L.S., Amyotrophic lateral  sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's Disease or Motor Neuron Disease (MND). My disease process has left me a quadriplegic, and I'm fortunate enough to own  a Tobii alternative and augmentative speech device. This device enables me to communicate using eye gaze technology. It's amazing and brilliant and totally infuriating when it doesn't live up to expectations. It doesn't function exactly like your home computer, in that there are a lot of extra steps. For example, typing this blog entry requires forethought and few options for making corrections. I type a line or two, then must press 'Insert Text'. Then press another 'Insert Text' button (virtually). To access special operations, one must press the 'Link' button followed by a combination of numbers that correspond with the operation desired. Choosing the wrong key is extremely easy to do and I have to be vigilant about typos lest I choose the wrong operation. Happens all the time! I was a more accurate typist with my fingers than my eyes!!

Back to passwords. Password retrieval is nightmarish! I've spent, literally, hours plugging in passwords to end up unsuccessful, deciding to sleep on it and try again the next day. Bitter frustration has kept me from favored websites, like PatientsLikeMe for months at a time. I, currently, cannot log into GoodReads due to not remembering my FaceBook password. (I log in by logging through FaceBook.) And not having my Facebook password keeps me from viewing videos and photos and being able to change settings since the Tobii SonoKey menu tiles don't facilitate these activities.

Why not simply change the password? Then I would have get help to change the settings in the control panel because not everything is accessible by eye gaze. Asking for help is not a problem. Getting competent help that won't mess up other parts of my computer is a big problem.

Help, oh help, oh help me, please. Make better solutions for people like me!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I Remember...

I remember catching fireflies,  putting them in a jar, as a girl of five. I picked pears off a tree that overhung an alleyway on my route home from school, then enjoyed the forbidden fruit. .I had a golden cat who chased a gray mouse through our living room sending my mother, 3-year old sister, and me screaming atop the sofa and chairs. We lived in a farmhouse and I watched Romper Room. A daddy longlegs skittered across my dirty kid legs as I teeter-tottered on a broken kitchen chair back. I played grocery store and laid out a bedroll for group nap time in preschool. We lived in an apartment attached to a bakery. My maternal grandparents visited and a photo was snapped. Grandma held Dawn and Grandpa held me. I held Grandpa's chin. Walking through the back of the flour-caked kitchen, I saw scrumptious pastries and colorful toys stuck in the cupcakes with my hungry kids eyes. We lived in a two-story apartment building next door to a large farmer's field.  That field was my...

Managed

Managed care, do not get me started. It is the bane of my existence and my savior. If quadriplegia has curtailed my activities, and it has, then being in a home has curtailed even more. I've had to dumb it down and set my standards low. Gone, are the halcyon days of getting in my wheelchair to go for a stroll or sit in the sun, or even sit in the sun room. Neither the nurses, nor patient care technicians, know how to put me in my wheelchair. Seriously. My chair has head controls and it is a bafflement. Most caregivers don't even realize I have head controls. First, they hit the left head pad when they lift the armrest which turns the chair on. Next, they sling me over and place me in the chair. The problem? My head, naturally, rests on the headrest, which accelerates and drives the chair and is beyond my control. Running over a caregiver or running myself into an obstruction are very real consequences of their ignorance. What could be worse? The caregivers remain clueless abo...

On-the-job Sass

I continue getting sass from one particular caregiver. He says, "You need to communicate with us." he continues to completely miss or dismiss the concept of I would if I could . It is part and parcel to having ALS, I am losing my ability to communicate and it is his job to assist me. Part of helping me, like it or not, is to learn my routine and anticipate needs, when possible. He misses the fact that I'm failing more every day and night time is when I'm weakest. It is extremely insensitive and arrogant to expect me to cater to his needs and expectations. Pushing me to repeat words or expound on a simple one word suggestion is physically taxing on my system, adding stress which further depletes me. Cuing is supposed to be caregiver's domain, not the patient's. Here is the situation, I am being changed. In the midst of the action, as seems to be his practice, he is sidelined asking me trivial, meaningless, but energy-sapping questions. Do I want my legs raise...