My Biography by Sandi Stevenson
I was born on the 5th of April at 00:25am. I was born on the 5th April at Bangour Uphill Hospital at 00:25am. At the age of 2 I had cancer in my left kidney so the hospital removed it with my spleen, leaving me with on kidney and a scare for life.
I was brought up in west Lothian outside Broxburn then at the age of age of 13 I moved to east lothian.
I used to go to Kaimes School 1986_1994, still got some memories from Kaimes, didn’t really keep it touch with anyone but i wish I did. Even we had a great headmistress. The good old days
since leaving kaimes, I went straight in to Juwl & Esk Valley Collage, both of them in Edinburgh.
Near to the end of collage for 2 years, I had a placement for one day, which was Alldays in musselburg and the 4 days in collage. It was coming up for Christmas and the Alldays manager Gilmore phone me up on my day off and said *would you like to do more overtime if we took you on” I said yeah why nor and then I left the collage.
I was in Alldays in Musselburgh for 3 years but got sick of it, wanted to do something else. So I went to Safeways at St James Center till it shut down then went to Asda at the jewel for 8 years.
Asda was good but half way through I ended up said because I was struggling with life outside work. Management wasn’t allowed me to take any time off so I left Asda. Ended up with anxiety and depression and thinking about taking my own life but I didn’t.
After getting the right support, slowly getting better, I got a part time job in Primark on Princess Street. Working away in Primark for a year untill my sight went down. Primark where amazing and gave me time off because I had cataracts surgery at the Eye Pavilion and it left me with sight loss.
I was off Primark almost a year because I was coming to terms with my eye sight and getting better. Working myself back slowly in to Primark which I only could do 5 weeks because I was struggling to see things. Primark were so helpful and supportive, I ended up making a decision to leave due to medical reasons.
Living with sight loss at the beginning was hard because coming to terms with limited of sight and not doing the things I could do before.
Before my eye sight went down, I used to travel the UK and do sight seeing and taking loads of photos for memories. In a way I still can explore places but only in your places ive been too before like Edinburgh/Glasgow.
Right now im a volunteer for Poppyscotland and support them through the yearly Poppy Appeal every year, which I really enjoy because it’s a great charity supporting Armed Forces Community. Apart from that I’ve got a My Guide Volunteer to help me get around places, once a day to improve my confidence also I attend RNIB at Hillside groups and clubs which I’ve made some great friends.
To get more detail from My Diary please CLICK HERE there is 2 more articles in there so far called 1: Dealing with Anxity & Depression, 2: Having a Visually Impairment
