At approximately 5:30 PM last Wednesday afternoon, my link to the outside world decided to up and quit on me.
After a year being joined at the iris and pupil, the eye tracker in my eye gaze machine died a warrior’s death while valiantly serving me in the writing of my book.
A list of contact names and numbers was quickly compiled and by Thursday evening, a course of action was decided and embarked upon.
We would be sending the broken piece of equipment back east to Dynavox for repair or replacement. Depending on how quickly my insurance company could process and authorize the transaction, I was given a two-week turnaround time frame.
Two weeks?
This is Kaiser we’re talking about.
Two months, minimum.
In the meantime, between now and the next time the benevolent gods of expedited paperwork feel like accepting my meager sacrificial offering of an entry level bureaucrat and an old-fashioned, hand-cranked ditto machine, I have been given a loaner eye tracker to use.
Jennifer from the UCSF ALS Center managed to not only find an unused device but she delivered and installed it as well. Thank you.
Major props to Fehmeen and my dad for hitting the phones hard on my behalf and for getting me back in the game sooner as opposed to later. As you are so fond of hearing the Dynavox saying: Thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks!!
Be sure to come back tomorrow to find out how I (barely) survived five days without the internet.
The Adventures of ALS Boy 
cannot begin to imagine 5 days without being able to communicate. Props to Fehmeen for interpretive skills, but still!
Is the loaner another DVox or an ERT?
Equipment failure is a bear. Do you have a backup/restore plan for your system? I recommend Norton Ghost so you can restore from a bare metal machine replacement. That’s what I use with my ERICA (ERT), with a USB drive I store in a drawer (so it is only used every two weeks for snapping an image of my entire disk).
Hey ENV-
The eye tracking attachment is on loan to me from the UCSF loan closet. As for backups, I have none … yet. Looks like that might be the next item on my shopping list.
Well Jason, I’ll tell you, the 5 days I wondered why there were only crickets coming from ALSBoy wasn’t great, either. I’m very glad to hear it was computer equipment failure, as opposed to human equipment failure. Silence was definitely not golden.
There was a time back in the days of yore when I did technical support, and oh, about 15 years ago I was fortunate enough to have picked up a request for computer help by Jerry Lieberman, a former provost at Stanford, who suffered from ALS. He could communicate by way of his laptop (running Windows 3.1!) and it spoke for him when he pressed certain keys. He had very limited use of one hand. This was back in the days when a modem was the connection to the outside world. We were just testing out ISDN at Stanford at the time, and were able to get him a connection this way to “speed” things up so he could browse the web, read newspapers, and go to epicurious.com. He used to send me recipes he found there, which was always funny because I couldn’t cook (okay, I still can’t cook, but I’m okay with it now).
He would have been amazed at the technology available today. It was always really nice to get a short email from him, especially knowing how laborious it was for him to type it. So I find myself really looking forward to a note that you’ve posted something on your blog every day, and even though I don’t post back too much, I do read them every single day.
I’m so glad you’re back in business! I’ve missed hearing from you!
Karen
Welcome back, Kotter!
I am so glad yo are back!!!
Waiting for your posts!!!