Christina: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Taking the Lead podcast where we empower people to be unstoppable. I'm Christina Hepner with my co-host Leslie Hoskins in Timothy Kuk. So now that the holidays have been over for a while, and you know, the last traveling I did was up north for, you know, new Year's Eve weekend. I need a, I need a trip.
Leslie: You're getting the itch again.
Christina: I'm getting the itch because
Leslie: it's. In Michigan. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. and I need somewhere warm. I, I have trips planned, but I can't say they're anywhere really warm. In February, I'm headed off to Illinois for the Illinois a e r conference, which is a professional conference for other, um, Orientation mobility specialists such as myself and teachers of the visually impaired and whatnot.
So I will be presenting there. I am heading to Tybee Island, though, in Georgia. Okay. . I I'm gonna be in Georgia. Yeah. End of March for another conference there. What's Tibi? I, I've never been Timothy. Have you been to [00:01:00] Tybee Island? I hear it's like ridiculously beautiful Tybee Island. Yeah. In Georgia.
Timothy: It's like a destiny.
Oh, Tye. Yes. Yes. It's gorgeous. But you will probably need a sweater still down there in March. No, end of March. End of March. No, it'll be in, it'll be in the eighties. It'll be
Leslie: in eighties. . Oh yeah. A sweater. Are you kidding me? I'll be
Christina: most, yeah. Michigan girl going to the south in March. ,
Timothy: bring your bathing suit and you'll be all right.
Yeah. Ty Allen would be, I guess you're gonna go through Savannah. You're gonna
Leslie: fly to Savannah. I know. I gotta book those flight soon. I gotta figure out what I'm doing.
Timothy: Well, why you there? You need to tour Savannah. It's Savannah. Yeah. It's kind of like, um, what's that one in Charleston, South Carolina. Oh yeah.
The old homes, the big the houses. Oh, it's beautiful in Savannah.
Christina: I love those areas like. Places to live is one of those
Leslie: areas. You have to go
Timothy: to the Pauline Restaurant in
Leslie: Savannah. Okay, I gotta figure, I really do need to focus on getting this travel arranged and figuring out Brian might come with me or my kids.
I'm not [00:02:00] really sure quite yet. Um, this, this doesn't sound like a work. It is a more trip I will be presenting. Uh, it's another professional conference. This is like, I'll be
Christina: presenting one hour of one day
Leslie: and then the two day conference. No, I am really looking forward to kind of being more present at some of these professional conferences because it is crazy.
We have been providing o and m services for 20 years at Leader Dog. Well now almost 21 cuz we're in 2023. Um, and people still don't know about it. I talked to a professional the other day who's been in the blindness and low vision field for 17 years, and he had no idea that we provided o and m services and it's, it's not his fault, right?
Like we haven't been promoting it a lot as much as we are now. So I'm excited to screw it from the rooftops and be at these different state conferences and, and share what we've got going on. That's exciting.
Christina: Is there any need for a digital marketing manager that.
Leslie: Well, [00:03:00] you know me in technology, so probably setting up the presentation.
We'll talk to our boss about that one. I'll be like, yes, and if you need a leader dog, listen, I'll be there. You know, client stories are 1000% always better than me talking, so, okay. Well you just take the podcast to this team. We'll take the team. We'll take that. The lead. So cool. I'm gonna have to look this place up.
I do think that would be really, Well, we'll go ahead and dive right into it because today's guest is a leader dog client who recently was on campus for orientation and mobility, and it was so fun because actually Christina and I had the pleasure of meeting him while on campus. Yes.
Christina: Bill Massey is a retired middle school teacher and Vietnam veteran.
Thank you so much for your service. And he's an author of a book about middle middle school students educating a teacher. He was diagnosed with glaucoma in 2010 and just recently found later.
Timothy: Bill, welcome to the podcast. And again, just like Christina said, thank you for your service and being a teacher boy.
Uh, taking, uh, teaching kids these days, I, I don't know how [00:04:00] anybody does it, but can you describe what glaucoma is and what
Bill: are the signs of it? Okay. Um, glaucoma is rather insidious in that it is slow progression of the dying off of light receptors in your eye. and that is accelerated by excessive eye pressure.
And, uh, you basically have to go every three months and have eye pressure checked and you try to control it with eyedrops. Um, now in my particular case, I was unfortunate to have what they call low pressure glaucoma, which means the pressure needs to be kept in the single digit. To slow down the progression of vision loss, whereas, uh, regular glaucoma, you can have it in the teams and eyedrops are not very successful at controlling the pressure that low.
So my progression of vision loss is more [00:05:00] rapid and more assured so to speak. now glaucoma really is the loss of the light receptors. You have about 3 million light receptors in your eyes as I understand it, and I am now down to about 200,000. And the peripheral vision in your eye, you're, you're legally blind with glaucoma if you have, uh, a vision loss.
Or you have remaining vision of 20 greater degrees or more of your circular peripheral visions. It's kind of like a slice of the pie. And then you have the condition of the vision within that slice that you relate to the 2020 spectrum. And so I have recently learned that you are legally blind if you have vision of 20 over 200.
or the radial vision in your [00:06:00] eye is 20 degrees or less, and my radial vision is seven degrees, and the quality of the vision in that slice is 20 over 2200. Wow. Bell. So I basically can see shadows. Shapes if they're moving. Mm-hmm. . So that is, that's the extent of my vision.
Christina: That is so interesting. It's like great execution.
Yeah. And I don't think a lot of people, yeah. You know, really know the depth of types, different types of vision loss. So Bill, you know, you said, you know, we said in 2010 you were diagnosed with glaucoma. When did you start to notice that you were having some vision problem?
Bill: Well, my eye doctor told me in 2010, you, you need to get a fetal division test too for glaucoma.
And he was so casual about it that I just kind of took it with complacency. [00:07:00] And it wasn't until maybe six months or so after that. That I had the first milestone in vision loss. I was, I went to bed, turned off the light, and I saw this little red blinking light at the ceiling to my right, and when I would look at it, it wasn't there when I'd look away.
It was there, and I didn't know it at the time, but that was the first instance of actual vision loss in the center so that when I looked at the light, nothing was there because there were no light receptor. , but I let that go for a while and I didn't really have it checked out until my next eye appointment.
And he asked me, did you have it done? And I said, no, you, you know, uh, you suggested it. He did one that day and he said, you're already in advanced days of glaucoma. . The bad news about glaucoma is it's so gradual. The good [00:08:00] news about glaucoma is it's so gradual because subconsciously, as your vision diminishes, you adapt without knowing you're adapting and you start doing things from feel that you used to do from site, and you don't really know you're doing some of that.
and when I realized that it was really at a point that something drastic had to be done was when I was coming home from school one day and I ran a red light without ever having seen the stop light, and that was because I had no peripheral vision in the top portion of my. and I said to my wife, I think I'm gonna have to give up driving cause this happened.
And she said, well then you, that's a no-brainer. And at the end of the school year, which wasn't with a couple of [00:09:00] weeks later, I retired. forced out of teaching by my vision. Now, I'll be very honest with you, I probably would still be teaching if it weren't for that. Teaching was the best, lowest paying job I ever had.
Leslie: I think that's a great way to describe it, having, uh, many educators in my family as well. Um, so can you tell us about, you know, so your, your doctor told you you have glaucoma. I'm curious to hear about. When were you diagnosed as legally blind? Because that was something that we talked about briefly while you were on campus or that you shared.
Um, so, so do you mind telling that story a little bit?
Bill: No. I was out walking one day, uh, back in maybe January and. I was walking and I knew, I, I, I looked down at the sidewalk. Cause by then I couldn't see very far out in front of me. And I didn't, I couldn't, I didn't have any, my [00:10:00] peripheral vision at the top.
And I walked, almost walked into a gentleman pushing a ch his baby and the stroller, and he had to go out and go around me on the sidewalk. and he said, come on, man. And went around me and it was the most embarrassing, humiliating thing. I never saw him. And I realized then I'm walking, looking down and I should be able to walk, looking up and use what vision I have.
And so I said to my wife, I've got to do something. It's besides sit here and go blind and I don't know what to do. No one ever mentioned anything to me about you are visually impaired, you are legally blind, and you're blind along that spectrum. So we are fortunate for me, we have the Morehead School for the Blind here where I live, and I just called them in the switchboard, which, uh, [00:11:00] transferred me to a lady and she transferred me to a lady who transferred me to a division of dhs.
Called North Carolina Services for the blind. And the woman that I talked to there said, well, I'm gonna send you a form. You have to get your eye doctor to fill this out, substantiating that you were legally blind. So I took that to my eye doctor, who I had been going to, uh, and that this was just this past January.
I had been going to him since 2010. and he filled the form out. That's how I knew my vision was seven degrees and 20, 2200. And I said, well, how long have I been legally blind? He said, you've been legally blind for almost five years. Oh my goodness. And you never know. So that was the first mention to me of being legally blind.
Now, I don't think that doctors at the eye clinic want to talk to you about blindness. Mm-hmm. , because that's what they're trying to. , [00:12:00]
Leslie: this happens all the time. Right? So people have no idea. Mm-hmm. that they're diagnosed or that they're legally blind and then they, the, they qualify for services. Uh, I think this happens, we hear it all the time, right?
Eye doctors sometimes don't know that services even exists or how to make referrals or how important that legal blindness diagnosis is. Um, mm-hmm. , this just actually happened to my grandpa just this week. He just found out. That he's legally blind. And it's kind of the same thing, that he's been legally blind for a while now, and now he can qualify for different services and it's, it's frustrating.
Um, and I appreciate you bringing this topic up and sharing your personal experience with it, cuz how did that make you feel? So like, once you found out you've been legally blind for five years, had no idea, you could have started some things a little sooner.
Bill: Well, you know, it didn't really have as much of an impact on me there in his office when he said it, as it did when I submitted this form to the North Carolina Services for the Blind, and I found [00:13:00] out all the things that had been available to me for five years.
Mm-hmm. , now, leader Dog being one of the most I. , which I knew nothing about, and I still didn't know anything about it. They didn't know anything. They didn't mention anything about that. I know about it now, but the point is I was then angered because I feel like those five years were taken away from me getting myself better prepared.
Yeah. And I don't know what I would've done differently in those five years except I would've done something and I just sat and let it go by until I almost ran a gentleman off the sidewalk with the. and it should never have come to that. Um, all this,
Timothy: all this sound familiar to me, bill? I mean, your stories, you know, I can sit back and think the same thing's going I went through and I'm sure there's thousands of other peoples doing the same thing.
So how did you find Leader Dog? Cuz apparently nobody knew about Leader Dog. So how did you find out
Bill: about it? [00:14:00] Well, I'll tell you how one of the services they provided to me is, they don't call it o and m training so much as they call it cane training Now. , interestingly enough, um, before I found about ca the cane training services available to me, um, my daughter ordered me my first cane off Amazon.
And so I just started trying to learn to use that to not triple over a curve or fall into a pothole. Um, but. Finally, one of the services that I became aware of through them was the cane training. So I got five, one hour lessons using a cane, and by the time the, the instructor picked me up and took me to an intersection or to a section where we would, uh, practice, I would only get about 30 minutes of session [00:15:00] and then I would, she'd have to move on to her next appointment.
Now, I'm never gonna blame her. She covers seven counties in North Carolina and has 80 clients. Thank you. And so she, she just doesn't have time and flexibility. And on my last lesson with her, we kind of said, okay, this is it, thank you, or whatever. And I said, well, Carol, what do I do now? And she said, well, you might try to lead her dog.
and I said, what is a leader dog? And she said, well, they're well known for providing God dogs, but they're, I think the only provider of o and m training. And I said, well, where are they and how do I get in touch with them? She said, I'll email you the phone number. And she did. And I call, and that started the process.
So I wind [00:16:00] up applying to lead the dog. I think in. I got word in June that I had been accepted. I got called in October and told that there was an availability in November, and uh, Erica called me and she said, and I said, I'll take it. I said, fine. Fortunately it won't be cold there yet. , she said, too late.
Too late. Yes. Now I went up there and it snowed three of the five days that I was there, and I was thrilled by that. Cause we don't get a lot of. and so everybody you know, kept saying, oh, it's gonna be so cold. It's gonna be so cold. Well, the forecast from here on Christmas Day is nine degrees. Oh goodness.
in North Carolina,
Leslie: so it prepared
Bill: you So . Yeah. Yeah. So you prepare me in more ways than one you guys and you don't even advertise that . But anyway, that's how I found out about Leader Dog [00:17:00] and I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't really know what the orientation of the mobility facets of o and m.
Um, I tried to find out as much about it as I could and on your website and everything, uh, and had a little bit more information. But I can say that I went there for the week and you know, it, it, the experience at Leader OG is such that you, you are ready to go home and you don't wanna leave , and that's quite a conundrum.
Um, but I, um, and, and when I got home, people said, well, tell me about your experience at Leader Dog. I said, you can't describe an experience. I can tell you what we did, but you won't have the experience. And people just don't know what that experience is like because when, when you are blind [00:18:00] going blind as you go blind, your world shrink.
and I didn't know another single person who was blind until I started looking into services for the blind. I did find out that there was a camp in North Carolina. This I went to back in June for all blind people, and that was quite interesting to be with about 80 people who all were, you know, head vision problems.
And that was my first exposure. , but like I said, at Leader Dog you, you have to experience Leader Dog to know what a Leader dog is. And it starts from the day I was picked up at the airport throughout the week to the gentleman who took me back to the airport, was a volunteer named Eric as helpful as he could be.
And everybody there is genuinely empathetic. , and that's one of the things that you don't experience a lot in the real world when you're blind, is empathy because people don't know what to do [00:19:00] with you and everybody there. It's more like a mission to you guys than a job, and I think it would have to be that way for you to be successful.
And the instructors, I mean, not only are they knowledgeable, But they're so supportive and so encouraging and, and I can only speak for the one I had. I had Lynn , Lynn the Night got along real well. He and I are roughly the same age, and so we could talk about movies and TV shows and music that none of you guys, anything.
Leslie: I'm sure he loved that .
Bill: And we would be walking along going, remember this show, remember this song? Whatever. . But uh, and, and it was just that kind of an experience there. And when you leave there, I mean with the cane, I thought that the cane is a tool and you leave there thinking this is an extension of me, um, that I use now [00:20:00] everywhere I go and it has opened up my world bef before I went there, I'll tell you, my world had shrunk down to my house and my.
and just my immediate neighborhood and now I can pretty much go anywhere and do go anywhere. I mean, I walk, you know, two miles from home now to the shopping center and expands your world and it, it may be kind of overdramatic to say, but in Vietnam you are safe inside the wire. And so when you blind inside the wire was my house.
Now I can go outside the wire. and go to the shopping center and anywhere I want to go, and that would, was only made possible by the training I got, and I don't know what else to say about it, to tell you the truth. That's amazing.
Christina: Leslie is over here like, just melting because, you know, she talks about o and m treating weight gain training and how, [00:21:00] you know, that's the first step to opening up your world.
So Leslie is
Leslie: over here like mm-hmm. , just, no, I, I, it's hard to even say add anything because you're doing such a great job of describing it and. And the impact that it has on people's lives. And I'm just so thankful that you made it here. And I think we hear this too many times from clients that they should have been here sooner if they would've known had they known their diagnosises, had they known that services exist.
And I don't know. How more we can scream this from the rooftops other than like you're doing right now of just sharing your personal story and, and sharing it with the world and anybody you interact with. Because there are so many people out in this world who are experiencing vision loss, um, and don't know that services exist or don't have access to services.
Mm-hmm. or don't know that they qualify for services. And your true testament to that, it's changed your life. You're now able to go out and go places independently. Mm-hmm. . It's, it's, you're right. It is why we do what we do. It's why Leader Dog is so important and critical in the world of, [00:22:00] uh, a blindness and low vision.
So I'm just really thankful that you're sharing your story
Bill: Well, and you know, if there's one thing that, uh, Lynn told me that I would impart upon anybody before they've gotten training is the acronym Linda's a Walking Wealth of acronym, by the way. His acronym case in anything that you do, you do it carefully.
You do it with accurate information, you do it safely, and you do it as efficiently as is safe. and I think through that acronym every time I cross a street.
Leslie: Oh, I think that's a great, so Bill, I have the honor of working with Lynn, also Lynn Goro. He is from Louisiana and he's a certified orientation and mobility specialist.
And when I first came to Leader Die, As a practicum student back in January of 2013, I also got to work with Lynn and I remember Case to this day and often use that acronym as well. [00:23:00] Um, he's an amazing instructor. He is definitely a outside of the box instructor. I remember all the time when working with him, I teach something, you know, textbook that I learned at the university and he'd say, but why?
I'm like, I don't know. Like that's why, that's how I was taught. And then he'd say, but why not this way? You know, if, if it meets the case mm-hmm. . And, and he's right. Like there are a million ways to do something. He, whatever's gonna work best for that client. And I'm so glad he's continuing to share his knowledge.
Bill: I am too. And little did I know that before this, he was a tightrope walker. Oh gosh.
Leslie: What hasn't that man done? Wait, a tight rope walker. I'll just ask him. Yes. He,
Bill: he taught kids at the Louisiana State Institute for the Blind to walk on the tight rope.
Leslie: Ma'am, he also took them bike riding. Horseback riding.
Scuba diving. Yeah. I mean, like, you name it, Lynn has. That's, and, and taken kids who are blind and visually impaired with them to do it. So,
Bill: uh, that's awesome. Lynn is the one who informed me about the [00:24:00] federal white Can Law Lynn said, now you have the right of way. Anytime you have your white cane. But you Cause you have the right cut test.
Yeah. Yeah. Said you'll be right or dead. Right, right. Or dead.
Leslie: Right. Always. I refuse that, right? Yeah. . That is funny. Well, um,
Christina: bill, you, let's talk a little bit about your career because you were a teacher later in life and you wrote this amazing book. Um, tell us a little bit about why you became a teacher later in life.
Bill: Well, When I came home from Vietnam, I said, I don't, I, I have to go home somewhere. And I didn't want to go back to a cotton farm. I'll tell you, uh, anybody who cheese combat over cotton, that should tell you something about Cotton Farm. . . But I decided on Washington, DC and so I went to Washington and IBM had a program where they were hiring people to train to [00:25:00] repair electric typewriter.
and they were spec, uh, especially hiring veterans. So I went to work for IBM doing that. After several years at ibm, I went from there to Exxon and a lot of people don't know. What's the connection between Exxon and ibm? Well, the connection is Exxon has a division that invented the memory typewriter and the fax sim machine.
And so I went to work for them selling. . And from there I got recruited to the Sheridan Corporation and I got into the marketing department and then to ge. So if there is a big corporation, I managed to migrate to the mall. But I was having lunch one day with a friend of mine who was um, , and I said, I'm just so burned out of all of this.
I just wish at this point in time I would do something else. And she said, what about teaching? And I said, well, I've thought about it, but [00:26:00] I don't know. She said, my daughter-in-law is a principal at a middle school. Why don't you go and talk to her? So I did. And she said, well, , my friend at the, uh, one of the nearby middle schools, he has an opening for an art teacher.
Why don't you go talk to him? So I did. And over the period of about two weeks, uh, I interviewed with him twice and the superintendent, and this was in the middle of a school year, and he didn't have an art teacher. . And so the, the outcome was, he said, you can have this job if you want it. I said, great. I'll go back, get the paperwork settled and everything, and leave my job and start here.
At the beginning of the year, he said, no, I need you to start in two weeks at the beginning of the semester. And so I did, and I had never taught. And North Carolina has a program where you can start [00:27:00] teaching. It's called lateral. if within a certain amount of time you take and pass the teacher certification test.
So I entered that program and bought a book called The First Days of School on how to Write a Lesson, plan, whatever. Wrote 10 lesson plans, went to school my first days as a teacher, expecting to have a teacher work with me. Got there, was informed that she had to fill in for a teacher who was out. . So I walked into my sixth grade class on my first day of teaching all by myself with my 10 lesson plan
Oh wow. And my, and my five rules of behavior. And that's where it started. And um, it was the best job I ever had for the least amount of money. That's true. That's incredible. And I, I started at 60 and I taught, and I had to retire at 70. , but [00:28:00] I'd still be there if, if I could be. Um, middle schoolers are truly in the middle.
They're what I call tweens who want to be teens and teens who want to be 20. .
Leslie: Yes. I
Christina: remember my middle school years. I, I think that is very true. . Yeah.
Bill: Well, I'll give them credit for keeping me young in spirit because I know, I knew every song by Rihanna. I knew every song by Keith Urban. I knew every song by Snoop Dogg, your hip man.
And um, and when they were studying, if they brought in music, I'd let 'em play it. And I said, now there's a curse word on here. We're done . And so we would play music while they were supposed to be studying, and that was a novel to them. Um, and. So I remember taking them to a college one day on the visit, and there was a college student asleep on the couch, , and one of my students said, To one of these [00:29:00] students giving us a tour.
Are you allowed to sleep in class? He said, well, you can, as long as you don't get your work done, , get your work done. And she said, we're not even allowed to chew gum.
Leslie: Oh my goodness.
Timothy: Well, bill, we've talked about your past. Let's talk about your future. Uh, 50% of the people for O n M come back and get a guide.
Dog art. Is that in your future or, or is the cane enough for you?
Bill: I don't really know yet. And to be honest with you, I don't know how to assess that need for. and at some point in time, I'm, I'm gonna have to do that and maybe you can direct me to some source of guidance on that decision. But I do know that since I came back, I have taken, I have an application right here on my desk to join the Lions Club in my neighborhood.
And my intent was, and this was spurred on by a few weeks ago, I was walking with my cane and I encountered a young kid. who might have been first grade age with about a [00:30:00] two foot long cane and his father coming up the sidewalk. And I thought, you know, and I wanna see if I can promote the line club to help me promote going into elementary schools and teaching kids what the cane is and what it means, um, in some regard to do something to pay back the lions.
and for the Lions Club to be more supportive. So I don't know how I'm going about that. , but that's
Leslie: my point. That's awesome. Bill, thank you so much. I know we could talk forever. I apologize that we're wrapping up here, but thank you for sharing your story and being so vulnerable. I think so many people are going to relate to this experience, um mm-hmm , and if you wanna talk about those guide dog options or anything like that, you know you can call me cuz I'm happy to have those conversations with you.
I
Bill: need Leslie's permission. ? Yes. .
Leslie: You gimme a call. We'll, we'll have those conversations. So, so thank you for joining us today and thank you to our [00:31:00] listeners for listening to the Taking the Lead podcast. I'm Leslie Hoskins with host Timothy cuo and Christina Heppner. We hope you enjoyed learning all about Bill's experiences, and please join us next week as we continue to dive into the world of.
Christina: If you'd like to learn more about applying to our free services at Leader Dog, you can head to leader dog.org or call us at (888) 777-5332. And don't forget, you can reach us at taking the lead@leaderdog.org with any questions or ideas. If you'd like today's podcast, make sure to hit subscribe and check us out wherever Podcast Stream.
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