Somewhat Silent

Just so you know, we cant comment on any post!!! Sara is obviously very occupied at the mo, so is there anyone else who can check it out?

Has anyone here ever been in hospital, and experienced good or bad deaf awareness? How do or did you cope with explaining to the multitudes of people that you came across that you are deaf [0].

I have had over 45 general anaesthetics, 50 hospital stays and countless out-patient appointments with doctors, nurses, physios, audiologists etc.  I have to say until recently the audiologists had the worst deaf-awareness of the lot of them.  I have also had to advocate for my partner when she was hospitalised which was extremely stressful.

As a child I realise I benefitted greatly from one of my parents, or other family members/friends being around virtually 24/7 while I was in hospital AND the ‘patronising’ way in which adults often speak to children.  My parents made up a sign which said something along the lines of “Natalya is deaf, she cannot hear anything without her hearing aid.  Please ensure she has her hearing aid on, and that you are speaking clearly while facing her”…

As an adult my experiences have been very variable:

I’ve had Mr Maxillofacial-Cranky[0] who I saw privately (dad’s work private medical insurance++) twice to check my tinnitus and TMJ were not something more sinister.  At the first appointment he couldn’t have been nicer - he must have thought there might be a paper in it.  The second appointment was appalling.  He was examining my mouth and jaw, his face so close to mine I couldn’t see him.  I couldn’t understand what he wanted me to do, so instead of repeating himself he decided to YANK my jaw to where he wanted it.  My partner eventually started repeating the instructions extremely clearly and audibly as she was across the room.  Mr Maxillofacial-Cranky didn’t like this intrusion and complained at her to stop - which she ignored.  Maybe I should have bitten his fingers! *gnash gnish*

In contrast Mr Polite-Orthopaedic surgeon couldn’t have been clearer, politer or had a better bedside manner as it were.  The first appointment lasted over an hour, where for the first time in my life I met a doctor whose reaction to my shoulder was “Oh cool, so how does this work then”.  He has one of those posher than BBC accents, and used terms like “One would do” or “One would think” which in many people would be pretentious, but in him was somehow appropriate.  He spoke quite slowly, clearly and in a consistent way, if I didn’t hear him he just repeated it and didn’t make a fuss.

Unlike his boss, Mr Rude-Orthopaedic surgeon who was rude, cranky and got aggressive with me in a multi-disciplinary consultation. He tried to examine me while standing behind me and muttering longwinded and complicated instructions at me.  He then interrogated me by asking very long and strangely formulated sentences.  Everytime I tried to answer what I thought he was asking he would cut me off and tell me that I wasn’t answering his question.  After a bit of this I was quite distressed, as I didn’t know if I was not hearing, mishearing or just being plain stupid.  Mr Polite-Orthopaedic surgeon eventually intervened, getting his boss to back off, and rephrasing some of the questions much more appropriately.

Mr ENT has always been excellent, occasionally he forgets to face me, but never blames me for his small lapses in deaf awareness.  He has one of those received English accents and is quite audible - as he should be dealing with ENT all day.  Sadly all but one of his underlings are currently crap and foreign so doubly difficult to hear.  The nurses in this department have been laughably bad, inaudible, stupid, incompetant for 18 years, and despite having ‘deaf people’ clinics they have no visual alerting system.  I really ought to DDA the hospital on that one.  I must ask the nurses to leave the consulting room next time they decide to have a chat while I’m trying to hear Mr ENT.

When my partner was hospitalised two years ago, we had had very little sleep for a week because of the pain she was in - that no one would believe she had.  My partner was finally hospitalised, given fluids, potassium and vicodin like painkillers which zonked her out, but didn’t kill most of the pain.  As no one knew what was wrong with her she was visited by various doctors, nurses and other people prodding and poking her.

Apart from the last surgeon who was clear and audible not one of the doctors had any deaf awareness worth a damn. One got really pissy when I asked her to repeat herself, as I had been shoved to the back of the room to let all her entourage in to look, poke and prod my partner.  No one told us what was going on, and I think that was exacerbated by me not being able to hear what was going on.  Fortunately the nurses were very good, and I managed to corner one immediately after her shift started so I could find out what she’d been told in briefing.  I found people only believed I was deaf the few times my partner heard something that I didn’t and tried to sign it for me so I understood.  Whenever we used sign, people remembered that I couldn’t hear and spoke louder and clearer to both of us.

What do you do when you are in hospital yourself, or with a family member who needs you to advocate for them.  What things work, and what don’t?  Do you always take someone with you to assist with communication, or just hope that the staff aren’t crap?

[0] - Replace with ‘partially sighted’ if appropriate, I’m interested in your stories too.
[1] - In the UK surgeons are referred to as ‘Mr’ rather than ‘Dr’ this is due to some historical thing.  A female surgeon is ‘Miss’ regardless of her marital status as far as I know.

Please let me know if you see anything wonky. Upgraded the server, so things might be odd for a short bit.

It looks like the protest now includes a good number of faculty and staff members and has the support of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).? The faculty senate gave a “no confidence” vote to Dr. Fernandes and students overwhelmingly agree as shown in the SBG and GSA polls.?

Official Message board at? ? www.GallyPost.com
Access News feeds at? ? www.DeafSpot.net? and Google News? ?
Blogs:? ? ? ? www.RidorLive.com? ;? http://www.xanga.com/elisa_abenchuchan? ;

The campus is on complete lock-down and U-haul trailers have been rented to block all gates of the University.?

?

Hello, I contacted you today (Friday, May 19 2006) about a negative/debit transaction showing up on my account’s online banking for over $1300 on May 19. The largest withdrawal that I have made recently was for $100 at an ATM in Brooklyn. I simply wanted to confirm that the information shown on your online banking website was correct, and if it was- I wanted to find out what I could do to prevent this money from being stolen from my account, or at least find out what the transaction was for so that I would know what had happened to my account.

I am profoundly deaf and cannot hear over the phone. Multiple representatives of Commerce Bank illegally refused to speak to me through my interpreter. This went on for over a half an hour as we were asked to hold time and time again. Had any random female called up with the information that we provided, the information would have been given to us long ago, and your representative confirmed this to be true. Because my interpreter was a male, your represenatives refused to accomodate my disability in any reasonable way. I offered to verify my information in multiple ways–the number that we called from is the number on the account, we asked them to call back at that number. I spoke into the phone and identified myself as Sara *** (name deleted), and stated that I am deaf. I offered to verify my information in any way that the represenatives saw fit. And they continued to refuse to accomodate me.

Had any random female from any random payphone called up with half of the information that we were willing to provide, she would not have had to jump through these hoops. But I- the legitimate account owner- called up and was illegally denied assistance because of my disability and because my trusted interpreter of choice was a male. This was not an issue of identity verification–we offered to have me speak into the phone multiple times, and when I was finally permitted the chance to do so- it made no difference at all.

At one point I was told to fill out a customer service request on your website- as if an anonymous internet transaction from an unknown IP address was somehow more verification of my identity than providing any wide variety of confidential and personally identifying information over the phone FROM THE PHONE NUMBER OF RECORD, or better yet- having them call us back AT THE NUMBER THAT YOU HAVE ON YOUR RECORDS. However, when I tried to access your online banking site to fill out this form, I was greeted with an error message stating that I should call commerce bank at (number deleted).

Finally, we requested that your representative call us back at the number on the account. We have been waiting for this call for over a half an hour. As I write this email, I am preparing to walk three blocks in the rain to the bank to request information that I should have had over an hour ago without the illegal discrimination and aggravation “America’s Most Convenient Bank” has put me through today.

Regards,

Sara **name deleted

Update: I went to the bank, and spoke to a representative and was informed that the “debit” is actually a pending DEPOSIT. (The online banking interface clearly identifies it as a DEBIT. A negative transaction against my account.) I was forced to walk three blocks in the rain because of an inaccurate and poorly designed website, and blatant discrimination against deaf patrons.

We called at approximately 11AM. It is now 2:47PM and the “we will call you back in 10 minutes” phonecall never materialized. I bet they’re patting themselves on the back now for successfully foiling a social engineering attempt. I mean. Honestly. Who would believe that a deaf person would ever want to call a bank, or that the deaf person wouldn’t be able to hear on the phone to talk to them?? It *must* be some random attempt by some random person to illegally gain access about whether a $1300 debit against an account is fraudulent or not. And the fact that it’s from the number on record? Pshaw. Us social engineers must have broken in. Deafness is an urban-freaking-legand anyway.

Suffice to say, as soon as that $1300 clears, I’m moving all my business to a new bank. Commerce Bank sure is convenient. Until you have to interact with them as a deaf customer.