When my daughter was almost 6, she lost her hearing. That is to say she had a bilateral almost identical loss of hearing in the human speech frequencies. Just the opposite of old age deafness, they said. It could possibly have been caused by the herpes virus as most of her classmates had come down with chicken pox then. The doctors at Mass Eye and Ear suggested steriods to minimize the swelling and damage to the ear nerves. I didn’t feel that I could make a decision like that which may have rendered my daughter unable to have children, so i declined. Later I learned that the herpes virus and steroids combination had killed children.
The school system was not supportive then in 1986, so I had to go to kindergarten each morning with her until they got an interpreter. I made my older children and husband take sign language lessons, but my youngest didn’t want to learn sign. She wanted to stay at school with her friends, so that’s what we fought for. The schools back then were just about totally uncooperative with my requests for interpreters and my daughter grew progressively more angry at the situation. At last I signed her out of school at 16. When her class graduated, she took the GED test and received the highest recorded scores at the junior college where the test was administered.
I understand that today, a parent could win a law suit if similiar treatment was given by a school system. But we went through it all in our time and in our way.
I always thought that my daughter gained more of an ability to read and to use words because of the deafness pushing her more into books and solitary thinking than most kids her age. She was also not overly influenced by television at a young age. Today she is a fine writer and a formidable debator! I think her deafness helped her to become aware of people and psychology in ways that never would have been if she had not lost her hearing.
She is held back only by a society that doesn’t believe that ALL citizens should have equal access to ALL things. Movies should be CC’d and radios should have digital readout of the broadcasts to name a few inequalities.
April 22nd, 2005 at 1:12 am
It is a shame that your daughter was struck back in “86. A good friend of mine has a daughter who is six now and had the same kind of thing happen to hear about 2 years ago. But they were able to catch it in time and she was able to recieve services so that her learning - and more importantly- her love for learning was not squashed. Im sorry that things are not equal for your daughter, yet Im happy to know that she has taken what she can get and learned from that. Things happen, for reasons unknown, but those that get past it and keep truckin’ are the ones to be commended. I applaud your support and determination for your daughter.
April 23rd, 2005 at 2:46 am
I have to say that reading this is quite fascinating. My doctor has told me that the reason I suffer from inner ear disturbances which cause me to have severe vertigo episodes (I’ve also heard the term “Meniere’s Disease”) is a result of having Mononeucleosis when I was 16. Apparently the virus and fever damaged my inner ear to a point where now….with each sickening episode…my hearing becomes more and more damaged.