out in left field

Out in left field

The “insult to the brain” as a stroke used to be called affected many muscles on the left side of my body including those in my eyes.  I have what is known as left field neglect.  I often don’t see objects that appear to my left sphere of vision.  In the hospital  I often couldn’t  find my fork when it was placed on the left side of my tray.  If i have a tray of food before me I often didn’t eat food on the far left of the tray because i wouldn’t  see it.  When driving and I come to an intersection, my left peripheral vision is so poor, I have to force myself to turn my head to the left in order to see in that direction.  Sometimes this maladyalso affects my appearance. 

   About one year after my stroke a deep feeling of restlessness set in.  I felt I was wasting time, spending days and hours doing nothing.  I could feel despair setting in.  I decided to resume teaching.  I couldn’t return to work having resigned my post and filed retirement papers with the state but I figured I could at least volunteer at my former school for an hour or two a day.  And so I did.  I began volunteering at San Gabriel Elementary school in South Gate which was the last school I worked at as a Special Education teacher and from which I retired in 2007.

One morning, I was ready to go to San Gabriel  for my volunteer hours.  I was already in the car,My son Gilbert was behind the wheel when he turned to look at me.

“Dad, he says, you didnt shave the left side of your face!”

What? I say, so i grab the rear view mirror and turn it towards me.  Sure enough, my right side was cleanly shaven, but my left side was unshaven, full of whiskers and stubble.  “oh my, I say, good thing you caught it before we got to San Gabriel I would have scared the kids.  So I glumly went back inside to finish shaving.  That darn left field neglect.
here's a photo of me as a community organizer in the city of Maywood, next to Bell.