Stressed out!

Well I lasted another whole day!
I have been upping the stakes on trying to get friends and relatives to sponsor me (or even just send some messages of support) and it seems Christmas is not the most charitable time of year as most people seem to have adopted the lalala-I'm-not-listening approach. I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now and assume none of them are checking their email/Facebook/etc. at the moment, but I really need all the support I can get, this is all very scary!!!
Not only am I changing the way I'm communicating for a whole week, but ITV WERE SUPPOSED TO BE (updated - their reporter is apparently off sick!) coming to work to film us today (and I'm horribly camera-shy) and Bruce is filming me doing my Christmas shopping tomorrow, and then we're on BBC Radio Gloucestershire early next week! I'm not used to this sort of attention and seriously wouldn't be doing it if it weren't for such a great cause.

Matthew has been amazing, and the people at work who have had contact with me or have looked at the website have been really great, too.
And then there's the newest donators to the JustGiving site;
Peter, Caryl, Kathryn, Dave (cheeky comment!), Maureen O'Donnell, Heather Cater, Maria Thomas, Jenny, Helen and one of my best friends, Seb (Gooderson) - I love you!
This is SO appreciated, and really does help me to stick at it (trust me, I would LOVE to stop trying not to speak - it's so second nature to me!). It's getting to a really tough point now, as the novelty is wearing off and people are becoming less patient, and my skills still aren't quite up to the standard where I can cope with this well.

People have started to guess at what I'm trying to say before I say it, peering at the screen of the communicator instead of waiting for me to 'speak' and a lot of the time aren't hearing every word I 'speak' and are therefore responding to what they think I said rather than what I actually said.


I have found that I am using the communicator more, though, especially with Matthew last night. I actually spent the few minutes I had at home before he got back from work typing in messages to store that I knew I wanted to discuss with him. I think this is a MAJOR part of using a communication aid - preparing for conversations ahead, having a lot of very handy multi-purpose phrases stored and knowing the most efficient way to communicate various messages in various contexts. Having a discussion on how my day went and what he intends to wear to his staff Christmas party tonight were mostly achieved through stored messages, telling him I'd already put our dinner in the oven, I typed out at the time, and thanking him for getting me a pen and spelling out somebody's name were both signed. I tried to teach him the Makaton alphabet as a backup communication strategy so I could spell things out, and he understands most characters, but there's still a bit of guesswork on his behalf. I am hoping by the end of the week he will be able to sign-spell as quickly as me!
As it turns out, the communication aid is becoming my primary communication tool and signing and gesture are becoming augmentative.

Come on everyone, show me some love!!!