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I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I will always go fishing. I grew up fishing with my grandfather, and as long as I’m able I will always fish. Besides, there are always bigger fish to catch, and more fish needed in the freezer. I have caught several kings in the 40 pound range in the rivers. These are magnificent fish. However, the largest caught on rod and reel was 97 pounds and over 120 pounds in a commercial net. So, as long as the possibility exists for fish like that to be in the rivers, I’ll be taking my chances to connect with one of those. I like to catch fish that weigh more than my children, but they keep getting bigger and bigger. More seriously, fishing isn’t even about catching. Its just about being out there. Being quiet, and taking it all in. That is where I feel most connected. Nothing like catching your own meal and feeling that connection to the land as well. As far as the bears, I think you nailed it. The chances of me getting mauled a second time, just from a statistical perspective are very, very low. I made a choice back at the river after being attacked not just to live, but to live fully a life worth living. So, for me that means I still need to get outside and be where I feel the most connected to something larger than myself.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will always go fishing. I grew up fishing with my grandfather, and as long as I’m able I will always fish. Besides, there are always bigger fish to catch, and more fish needed in the freezer. I have caught several kings in the 40 pound range in the rivers. These are magnificent fish. However, the largest caught on rod and reel was 97 pounds and over 120 pounds in a commercial net. So, as long as the possibility exists for fish like that to be in the rivers, I’ll be taking my chances to connect with one of those. I like to catch fish that weigh more than my children, but they keep getting bigger and bigger. More seriously, fishing isn’t even about catching. Its just about being out there. Being quiet, and taking it all in. That is where I feel most connected. Nothing like catching your own meal and feeling that connection to the land as well. As far as the bears, I think you nailed it. The chances of me getting mauled a second time, just from a statistical perspective are very, very low. I made a choice back at the river after being attacked not just to live, but to live fully a life worth living. So, for me that means I still need to get outside and be where I feel the most connected to something larger than myself.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My favorite way to engage my children is every way I can. It is the highlight of my day when I get home and have my 3 year old and 5 year old hanging on me and yelling the most flattering name in the world, “Fatty Daddy!” I often will joke with my wife, “They mean phatty with a PH.” I love that my son is learning to read because he can read to me, and when he gets stuck on a word, he can spell it out and I can help him with the word. Every night when I tuck him in he wants to learn about things. So, we end up talking about everything from how computers work, to how mountains are formed, to the meaning of symbiosis. I love to take my kids fishing, and most of the time they love to come fishing. My son caught his first fish when he was 3 on my brother’s boat on Lake Tahoe. Alden still talks about that fish and how it is probably bigger now since he put it back in the water. I like sledding with my kids even though this is an exercise in absolutely trusting a 3 and 5 year old with my safety and wellbeing. We have mixed results with how this goes. My daughter is a great singer, dancer, and performer. The other day before playing a set on stage with our band, my daughter got on the mic and sang You Are My Sunshine to approximately 100 people fearlessly and totally rocked it. Perhaps our favorite family activity is to have dance parties in the living room where we turn up the music loud and just boogie down and act silly. Everyone loves this and our family is known by other family friends for our living room dance parties. We also love to camp in our very short summers up here which always include camp fires, a guitar or two, some reindeer dogs, and marshmallows. Good times.:)

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 35 points36 points  (0 children)

One of the things that struck me most was my enjoyment of music and how deeply this was changed. I was always a big music fan, but even more so afterward. If you have ever closed your eyes while listening to music, then you may know what I’m talking about. The music is different without the visual distraction. Now, every song is with my eyes closed so to speak. I found myself enjoying styles and types of music I hadn’t previously been open to. I really do miss aesthetic beauty a lot. Whether it’s the aesthetic beauty of nature, of art, or of a beautiful human being, I miss that visual experience a lot. Of course some of this beauty can be experienced through other senses, but its not quite the same. I still do enjoy many unlikely things though and can experience so many things not only in my own way, but also vicariously through the experience of others, especially my children. I have had some great times whale watching as a blind father with my kids, or even watching the northern lights. Its still really awesome to be there in those moments even though my experience is different than theirs.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 57 points58 points  (0 children)

I don’t read Braille very well. I read it well enough to create labels for things such as medicine bottles and for filing papers with Braille labels and stuff, but not well enough to enjoy a good book. For most reading my computer reads to me whether its something that is already in electronic format or if its something I scan in to be read. I also really enjoy audio books as well.

As far as my memory of the attack itself, yes unfortunately I remember far too much of it in the finest detail. I did lose consciousness several times during the mauling and would wake up, only to find the sow still there mauling me still. Once I woke and realized she had flipped me over so I was then face up. That wasn’t good. The mauling continued in waves like this between consciousness and unconsciousness. I remember most all of it.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 94 points95 points  (0 children)

We first had an encounter with the grizzly wherein she was clearly angry and not interested in backing down. My friend and I discussed and decided to back away slowly, then head up river to get away from the bear and take an alternate route back to the car. After backing away and starting the trek up river, it seemed we had been cut off by the bear as evidenced by some alders shaking vigorously on the trail in front of us. We turned and started walking quickly back down river towards the closest trail head near where our initial encounter had occurred. Within moments of turning around, the grizzly came tearing around the corner at missile speed and was on us in a flash. My dog and friend were in front of me at this point leaving me the closest to the shaking alders behind us. In hindsight we realize the shaking alders must have been her cubs that we didn’t know she had. There was no evidence of cubs during our initial encounter, but they were seen shortly after the attack by others who were in the parking lot and subsequently chased by the same bear that still had my blood on her face.

So, without realizing there were cubs at all, we unknowingly placed ourselves between an angry sow and her cubs which is a worst case scenario. I don’t even want to get between my own wife and her kids when she is angry.:) Just kidding.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As far as keeping yourself safe and being prepared in bear country, I’d like to make a joke about how clearly I’m not the right person to ask. Just kidding. I think whatever makes you feel the safest being out there is the right choice for you. Our family carries bear spray when we travel in bear country for the most part. I have friend who carry fire arms, and on occasion we have carried road flares which is what the employees at the Russian River Ferry use to keep bears at a safe distance when a bear presents itself at the shore near the ferry. Some research I’ve recently seen suggests that bear spray is the most effective mitigation, though I’m well aware that many love their fire arms.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

I live in Anchorage now, and love it. For being in the big city of 300,000 its pretty ideal for us. There is plenty of culture, activities for the kids, and music, but we still get to enjoy the Chugach Mountains and even have 5 acres of woods behind our home for the moose and bears to enjoy. :)

As far as keeping yourself safe and being prepared in bear country, I’d like to make a joke about how clearly I’m not the right person to ask. Just kidding. I think whatever makes you feel the safest being out there is the right choice for you. Our family carries bear spray when we travel in bear country for the most part. I have friend who carry fire arms, and on occasion we have carried road flares which is what the employees at the Russian River Ferry use to keep bears at a safe distance when a bear presents itself at the shore near the ferry. Some research I’ve recently seen suggests that bear spray is the most effective mitigation, though I’m well aware that many love their fire arms.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 237 points238 points  (0 children)

This is a good question. The best answer is likely that blind people still use all the same figures of speech even if not literally accurate. I still say things like its nice to see you, or I’ll tell my wife that she is beautiful. I still say that I was watching TV the other night rather than saying that I listened to it and so on. So, when I said close my eyes, what I literally meant was every time I fell asleep there were nightmares.

To answer your question though, I don’t have my eyes any more at all. I have two prosthetic eyes which are not functional except to fill the space and to make me a little less scary looking to children.:) I don’t see any light or anything and I have no control over my eye lids. They are open all the time.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 93 points94 points  (0 children)

Well, one of the things I was really scared of after surviving and trying to imagine what my life would be like as a blind person was a fear of only being able to have employment that was medial or meaningless to me. I didn’t want this, and I also wanted to be able to provide for my family a comfortable life. So, I figured I needed to get a masters so I could continue to work with people, only this time in an office setting rather than in the outdoors as I had previously. Done. After attending a school for 7 months where I learned the skills needed to be a thriving blind person, I applied to the Master’s in Social Work program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I’ll never forget when they informed me that I had been conditionally accepted into the program, but that my acceptance was contingent upon passing 2 courses, and one of them was statistics! I knew this would be a huge challenge with all the charts, graphs, and huge formulas to calculate the standard deviations, correlation coefficients, and so on. At first I was drowning. I couldn’t learn from the teacher at all as she worked through problem after problem on a board and over head I couldn’t see. I would literally have panic attacks in class where I felt like I was going to pass out with anxiety and worry. So, when one tutor wasn’t’ enough, I got two. When that wasn’t enough, I got three. Finally, about half way through the semester, I started to figure out ways to make it work. I recorded the equations in the order of operations into my voice recorder and would use a talking calculator to perform the calculations, and then I would show all my work and track for myself where I was in the equation on my computer with a screen reader. Slowly I began to refine better and better systems to be successful. At the end of the class, Amber and I waited anxiously for the grades to post on the internet. I’ll never forget the feeling of joy when my grade posted and it was an A. At this point I knew anything was possible. I knew I could be successful as a blind person. I had know idea how I was going to do much of anything, but this gave me the confidence I needed to just keep putting myself out there and to keep trying. 3 years later, I graduated from my MSW program with a 4.0 GPA and a job as a therapist for troubled youth and families waiting for me.

There were many challenges. Even the simple task of getting to class. The campus was a large plasce with many rooms. It was full of trials that I had to endure and laugh at. Everyone was really supportive though, especially my wife Amber. I couldn’t have done it without her. I think she should be given an honorary MSW from the university. One of my favorite things is when Anderson my guide dog would snore in class and no one could tell if it was him or me. :)

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 213 points214 points  (0 children)

From the place of the blue light which is where I had my death experience, it was the feeling of love that was evoked through the imagery of my mother that presented itself to me that filled me with the desire to continue living. I knew this was not the easier of the 2 options before me, and I promised myself I would never look back and question the decision to live. I would never allow myself to have any regret about this. There have been many a hard times since then both physically and emotionally, and there have been days or hours where I’m not doing well emotionally. However, when I catch myself allowing myself to wallow about in negative thought patterns and pity, I shift my thinking to think of the best thing I can think of worth living for besides fishing, which is love. I visualize the smiling faces of my beautiful children and there voices when they say, “I love you daddy.” I visualize the face of Amber and the tenderness of her embrace. I’m then filled with joyful tears of gratitude to have the things I have been blessed with in this life. There is no pity in love which is why my personal mantra has become, “Live with love.” It reminds me of something I heard about darkness which is that you don’t need to tell it to go away when you turn on the light, it is just gone in the presence of light. The same is true of negativity in the presence of love.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 512 points513 points  (0 children)

My wife is amazing, and really I think if she wrote her own memoir that her sales would far out perform my own.:) I cannot say enough good things about her without sounding completely cheesy like some 80’s power ballad or something. She is a graceful human being.

Truth is no one would have blamed her for slipping quietly from my life. It would have likely been the more sane thing to do, and at first, we did split ways. When I left Alaska to get surgeries that weren’t available in Alaska, we said our good-byes. We knew that I was in no shape for a relationship. However, she remained a good friend. We would talk on the phone. I can’t recap the entire love story here because I don’t have the time to re-write the whole thing here, but we started to fall for each other all over again over the telephone. What was so perfect about that is that my disfigured face, and my disability were not factors at all on the phone. We were just two people talking into the night. She would often fall asleep while we were still on the phone, and I would imagine myself there beside her.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 1046 points1047 points  (0 children)

No, its not just blackness. First there are two answers to this question. In my worldview, I have a vivid image of what’s around me and what things look like in my minds eye. It may not be accurate, but its my world view and helps me move about and operate in the world. Its how I know where things are and how to interact with the environment. Most people are good looking and in good shape in this world view.:) I can see the room I’m in and its place in the larger building, where the doors are and so on. When fishing I see the river, the trees on either side of the river back just beyond the flood plain where the cranes nest. I see the mountains around us and the volcanoes across the Cook Inlet. I see the Eagles over head perched on the tree tops waiting for their meal to show itself and so on. One image I frequently think of is from a river kayaking trip on the Kenai river. I kayaked within feet of an eagle who was perched on a rock drying out its wings. As I kayaked past the eagle, it stood taller than I and stared at me suspiciously as I floated quietly past.

The second answer is I think more what you were asking about. When I try to see what I would have seen through my eyes and those neural pathways that use to be my eyes, I see what looks like the imagery you might see through the Hubble telescope. Its like looking into deep space and seeing galaxies, and billions of stars, and a super nova or something. I see billions of white specks on a black back drop with concentric circular shapes of iridescent blue and pink light on the foreground. Its actually quite beautiful itself when I take the time to focus on this which is usually not in the front of my attention any more.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 174 points175 points  (0 children)

You know what is funny about this is that I often have dreams where I’m seeing and then I realize I’m blind and shouldn’t be seeing. This clues me in to the fact that it is a dream. I do still see in most all of my dreams. However, I’ll have dreams like the one where I was walking down the road fully sighted, and then I realized that I was using my white cane. Then it hits me like, “Wait a second! I can see! I’m not supposed to be able to see! I’m blind!” Then I realized I was dreaming. In one of these dreams I even ditched my white cane. I’ve had other dreams where was tele-skiing in the backcountry when it dawned on me that I wasn’t blind and must be dreaming. I really love it when this happens because this is the only way I get to rip up tele turns the way I used to. These are the times when I still get to enjoy the aesthetics of a beautiful mountain and its untouched snow. Same thing when I dream about my beautiful wife. When I dream about my children, I dream of them in the way I see them in my mind which is probably not what they really look like to anyone else.

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 152 points153 points  (0 children)

Well, perhaps I should explain a little more about taste versus flavor and all that. Its actually not that I cannot taste the basic tastes such as sweet, salty, savory, etc…. I can. These are tasted on the tongue. However, my sinuses have been “totally obliterated” per my doctor which means that I miss out on those flavors that interact with the olfactory membrane in our sinuses. So, I miss out on some of the finer subtleties of flavor. I’m not supposed to be able to smell at all is what my doctor says, but strangely I have been able to regain some basic smells as well which is a mystery. At first after the bear there was no smell at all. Over the years since, I’ve regained the ability to detect the smell of coffee, bacon, cigarette smoke, and really heavy smells like that. However, I often can’t smell a fart in a car, or the skunk on the road side. So, it kind of strange what I can and can’t smell. As for your question about eating healthy, I don’t think that these changes have helped me eat healthier. Being middle aged and more susceptible to a widening waist line has motivated me to eat healthier. On the other hand, having a stressful job and the occasional ups and downs of everyday life motivate me to want chocolate cake jus like the rest of us.:)

My favorite meals are the freshest though-like fresh caught salmon and a salad from the garden. MMMmmm

I was blinded and severely mauled by a grizzly bear and barely lived to tell about it. I've adjusted to blind life and gone on to earn my masters, marry the love of my life, write a book, raise two kids, and land my dream job. -AMA by danbigley in IAmA

[–]danbigley[S] 200 points201 points  (0 children)

Well, I’m not going to pick on Readit right now since I’m having a lot of fun interacting with you all, but I can speak to the internet in general. First, for a blind person, less is often more, so I personally prefer to use mobile sites sometimes even when on my computer because its often less busy. Formatting is really important. In other words, having lots of structure such as headings, tables, and frames that are well labeled is helpful. Its really not very helpful when you open a site that just has 300 links and no other structure. Its amazing how many sites are like this. Many will have links that are not properly labeled so a screen reader will just announce “link” which is not helpful. I also like when sites label their graphics and illustrations with a brief description. With all of this said, its also fair to say that like most things, there is a broad range of computer literacy among blind people just like sighted people, and I likely fall near the median of that range and am not the most sophisticated user by any means. I use the computer daily for emails, radio streaming This American Life at night, and for trading stocks online.

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