|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Yesterday I was reminded that PSP affects much more than the things most people can see, and all it took was an iPhone screen protector.
After this morning’s post, I’ve decided I need something to cheer me up. Perhaps it will cheer you up a little too.
I’ll tell you something else that happened yesterday. It was typically me, although perhaps enhanced by PSP. My impulsiveness and, some would say, stupidity. Others might generously call it determination.
Trying to fit an iPhone screen protector. What possessed me.
How many people who don’t have what seems to be at least a PhD in the screen fitting profession have actually succeeded at this? I know I haven’t. Not before PSP and certainly not now.
It is one of those jobs I would always have asked someone else to do. In exactly the same way that I wouldn’t touch the electrical circuit board in our house or attempt to fix a car engine.
Patience. Following a process exactly. Misalignment. Bubbles. Dust spots.
When you have spent far too much money on a phone, and then spent more money on a case, why would you take the risk?
More importantly, why would someone with PSP take the risk?
This is somebody who never did DIY. Somebody who never reached for a drill. Somebody who now has serious vision problems. Double vision. Blurred vision. Difficulty looking vertically and, increasingly, horizontally.
I won’t go into my growing inability to see properly to the side or behind me, except to say that if you don’t want to startle me, please don’t say hello from behind. And if you intend me harm, then approaching from behind is probably the way to do it.
So why did I attempt something that was so obviously likely to fail? Impulsiveness is one answer. Stupidity is another. And yes, I did attempt it. And yes, it failed.
One of my children tried to rescue the situation and remove some of the bubbles, but the screen protector was already firmly attached in the wrong position.
The outcome was entirely predictable. My loving wife eventually took the phone to the shop, where one of the experts fitted a screen protector in about the same amount of time it takes me to decide what I would like for lunch.
Perfectly.
Why did I do it? My carer always tells me to wait. My physio sees my frustration when asked to rest 1 minute between exercises.
Because I acted exactly as most people who know me would have predicted. I simply couldn’t wait and that overrode any thought of my chances of being able to do it.
The more I thought about it afterwards, the more I wondered whether that is one of the stranger challenges PSP creates.
Every day there are things I can’t do as well as I once could. Some things I can still do if I take a little longer. Some things I probably shouldn’t attempt at all. The difficulty is knowing which category something belongs in.
If I stop trying things too early, PSP wins. If I stubbornly insist on doing absolutely everything myself, then I end up with a badly fitted screen protector and, potentially, much bigger problems.
Somewhere between giving up and being stubborn lies the right answer.
I’m just not very good at finding it. I have always been impulsive, and I can’t measure the difference. What I can say is that there is not a chance in a million that even I would have attempted that. Simply not.
I ordered the screen protector online and then waited for it to arrive.
When I say “waited”, what I actually mean is that I checked the delivery status repeatedly (at least 10 times) and may have WhatsApped customer service despite the fact that the company was still comfortably within its two-business-day delivery promise.
The truth is, I struggle to wait for things now, more than before. Perhaps there are all sorts of psychological explanations for that. Perhaps there are neurological ones too. I honestly don’t know.
I only know the facts on the ground. Patience has become harder.
Maybe that is because time feels a little different when you are living with a progressive condition. I don’t know. But I do know that I find myself wanting to do things now rather than later, and waiting seems far more difficult than it once did, even though it was always a challenge.
Even waiting through the twenty-two-minute transfer of data from my old phone to the new one felt like a victory. And it was hard but I knew the consequences of failing and Apple seems to give you no easy route around (plus I had full capability on both my iPad and Mac).
The transfer worked. I now have a new phone.
Why did I buy a new phone?
Well, the old one was cracked on the back. The case was broken. It was several generations old and lacked something called Apple Intelligence, which I had somehow persuaded myself was going to be life changing.
If I’m being honest, I wanted a new phone for the same reason many people want a new phone.
I wanted a new phone.
So far, the phone seems – well – exactly the same – it hasn’t transformed my existence, except for one thing I am noticing. The good news is that it does seem to recognise my voice a better when dictating. As my speech changes over time, I am hoping that will continue to help – that is apparently a feature.
And I now have a perfectly fitted screen protector, installed by somebody who clearly holds a PhD in the highly specialised discipline of iPhone screen protection.
A little stupid. A lot impulsive. Entirely predictable.
I know this is a relatively light example, but people suffer really terribly from impulsiveness and I must not understate it – falling, causing crashes and a number of horrific stories that I have heard. It is a big deal even as I lighten the tone. This article outlines some of the challenges and consequences – https://pspawareness.com/blogs/psp-q-a/impulsivity-in-progressive-supranuclear-palsy-unraveling-the-connection-and-strategies-for-management
