Somewhat Silent

Difficult Situations

14 Responses to “Difficult Situations”

1. Sammi (User Verified) :
   December 23rd, 2006 at 5:19 pm

   This happened when I was in the Jobcentre. I had an advisor given to me - a disability advisor, and he had the worst stutter I’ve ever encountered. I did feel horrible saying that I’d have to have another advisor, but luckily he understood that it was the Jobcentre’s fault for being a bit dim.

2. lette :
   December 24th, 2006 at 5:16 am

   hahahahah awww lousey!

3. barakta (User Verified) :
   December 25th, 2006 at 7:41 pm

   Mela: I have had a few situations of painful comedy. The latest was an ENT specialist registrar (one down from consultant, top doc). He had a very strong Arab accent and I was struggling to understand him, his English was also not that great.

   There was misunderstanding thanks to an inexperienced audiologist telling me I had lost hearing when I hadn’t so I was querying this with this doctor. According to my partner he turned away from me and asked “Have you ever had an audiogram before?” which I didn’t hear, so didn’t answer. As it was, I had no further loss, which he proceeded to tell me in a patronising and insulting manner.

   I was annoyed that I didn’t hear him asking about audiograms because it was an incredibly STUPID question. I have a BAHA which means I must have had extensive audiometry to have been allowed to have it. That is in addition to him turning away from a deaf person to ask them anything 0/10 for deaf awareness there I think.

   However the worst experience I ever had with a doctor was a maxillofacial surgeon who was checking my wisdom teeth out. He was ‘in my face’ examining my teeth and I couldn’t hear him. He refused to speak up, speak slower, or repeat himself, instead preferring to yank my mouth around when I failed to comply with his inaudible demands. I couldn’t see his mouth to lipread, because he was so close and out of my visual field.

   I ended up watching my partner across the room signing his instructions to me, so I could at least attempt to comply. He wouldn’t even give them time to ‘interpret’ what he was saying. In hindsight I should have bitten him - that’d have got the point across!

   I’ve never had problems with dentists, or orthodontists, in fact they have almost always been very good, using a clear face shield instead of a mask so I can lipread them, and done things like moving back so I can see them before speaking! Thankfully I never saw this doctor again - he can keep his manners to himself.

   Sammi: Good old jobcentre then! They’re fantastically crap with me, having advised me more than once to get a ‘callcentre’ job even though I don’t use phones for voice. The DEA advised I get a job as a sign language interpreter, even though my sign is not that good…

   In the early days when I was on JSA I had an advisor (I usually get a different one every visit) who I called Mr Slug, who was so inaudible and exanimate that I couldn’t even detect when he was speaking. I tried the usual “pardon?”, “You what?” and “Are you actually speaking cos I can’t actually tell!” with no luck.

   So I STARTED SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY and signing exaggeratedly at the same time. This got his attention, because all the bored people started to stare at us *grin*. In fact I think it was Mr Slug who suggested call centre work, on a subsequent visit - so I was justified in having a giggling fit very loudly at him too.

   The last JSA advisor I had was some poor guy with orange lenses who was OBVIOUSLY severely dyslexic. He was incredibly slow, so my appts were always an hour late - no doubt he got into trouble for it as well . I didn’t mind really, because at least he was nice, and he didn’t have a go at me for stuff because it took him all his time to write a few lines on the computer. Talk about unsuitable job allocation, but I bet he’d been on the dole too long or something.

4. mela (User Verified) :
   December 26th, 2006 at 9:29 am

   Hi all. Sorry you had such lousy experiences I think we have all had our fair share of them. Some I have been able to laugh off and others just hurt. But I guess we all learn to cope we don’t really have much choice now do we.

   I have to like the time I applied for a job.The manager was forewarned that I am deaf but lipread very well and with my aid could cope very well. He told me I was perfect for the job BUT he didn’t know how his staff would manage so he couldn’t give it to me. I asked him if he had had any problem communicating with me and he said “no” but he was not prepared to employ me just in case it did cause any problem. I stood up and told him he had a much bigger problem than I did and left.

   I have had occasions which I am sure all of you have had where we have heard incorrectly for example: I was making my dad some toast and my brother and I were sitting chatting. He turned to me and said “you best check on dads toast” to which I replied ” why must I check dads toes they are fine” my brother pointed to the oven and then I twigged. LOL

   I guy I knew many years ago who was also hearing impaired told me his mom sent him to the shop to buy pegs, he came home with pears needless to say he had to go back and get a refund and then buy the pegs. We had a good laugh.

   I can’t help but feel that the saying “laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone” Yes sometimes its hard to see the funny side and yes there are times that it is not funny but for the most I really try to see the lighter side.

5. lette :
   December 28th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

   iv had situations where people ask me things and i dont have a clue what they actually said, and i answer yes, where if i had heard them i would have said no!! and vise versa! also I have a tutor at the moment, who is very sarcastic! not towards me but in general and in a very funny way, but I cant hear sarcasam! and i take it seriously!! and then there are misunderstandings and usually ends up her being embarrased and we start laughing!!

6. Sanctum1972 :
   January 3rd, 2007 at 3:52 pm

   I’ve been in situations where my hearing lacks the ability to ‘catch up’ to what people say and I ask them to repeat. I strain time to time to read lips, even in my early/mid 30s.
   sometimes I wonder if it’s mental noise or ‘noises in the head’ that also contribute to the problem..or the mere distractions of thinking could detract from the abilty to understand others..so I have to focus relentlessly.

   Do some of you have difficulty concentrating from ‘mental noise’, even if you don’t have your hearing aids on? How do you deal with that issue?

   At least currently, I’m still without a place but working temporarily part-time until I get a new job which I have an interview with next week in a creative/apparel design agency..doing mostly production work. We’ll see how this goes…and if I get this gig, that’s a better birthday gift for me this month.

   Speaking of creative, is’nt Sara supposedly still involved in the publishing industry at 3Dny books?

7. lette :
   January 4th, 2007 at 7:01 am

   …mental noise??? you sure there are no voices in the mix?? hehehe just kidding!! but im afraid i dont know what you mean!

8. Sanctum1972 :
   January 5th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

   Lette, just because my ears are’nt all gone “Pete Tong” style…does’nt mean I’m lacking in mental noises..it’s that sometimes my mind does have some ringing sounds time to time when I take the hearing aid off…
   could be the headphones blasting…

9. barakta (User Verified) :
   January 6th, 2007 at 3:05 am

   Mela: I do laugh, I also get very mad and where possible I get even, or change what I can. Just this week I sent a letter to one of my hospital requiring them to store my telephone number with the relay assist prefix or not to store a number for me at all. I anticipate a little bit of resistance, but I have two large pieces of legislation on my side .

   My usual trick with people who are excessively stupid is sarcasm or directness to the point of being blunt. The Arab registrar should have known better as he worked in ENT, so I made sure the consultant got told the following appointment. Happily all the subsequent registrars and junior doctors in this department have all been clear, polite and had good deaf awareness. They are unused to dealing with people who cannot hear without aids AT ALL but when prompted they all stopped, waited for me to plug in again and repeated themselves - which is fine by me.

   Sanctum: I liken my hearing to packets of data over a network that travel faster than my brain can process them because of my deafness. I often drop words or parts of what people say to focus on the gist of it. I often take a few seconds after the speaker has finished speaking to actually grok what that person is saying. Sometimes I ‘forget’ the context and need a repeat - my auditory memory is as expected less good than that of a hearing person.

   Hearing and lipreading for us deafies is extremely tiring compared to hearing for hearing people. We have to make do with a lot less information. Some of us are better at processing sound than others, some have more or less optimal hearing than others and of course we all have different amounts of stamina.

   I have friends who can lipread speech without any sound, I cannot do this I need my hearing aid to understand speech. Even with my partner speaking I have poor lipreading alone. However with my residual hearing I hear pretty well, but never more than 90% accuracy. I’ve been subtitling some stuff for a friend and with repeating the video several times I still have about 10% mishearing and not hearing words at all rate (my partner’s proofing my subs)…

10. lette :
    January 7th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

    I was kidding!!! and yes i have bells in my ears quiet a bit!! but i dunno about mental noises as i do have some sound! could it be tennitus?? no?? iv never had that so i actually dont know!

11. mela (User Verified) :
    January 14th, 2007 at 2:59 am

    My sister is here on holiday. We were just talking about lipreading. She was saying about when we were in school I was eventually in the same grade as my sister. We would lip read each other in class. The beauty of this was that the teachers could not punish us as there was no vocals.

    Now that was fun!!!!!!!

12. mela (User Verified) :
    January 17th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    I far back as I can remember I have always missed words when people are talking to me. I just seemed to adjust naturally and learn’t to focus on key words and I am able to make out what people say.

    I can lipread with or without my aid. I guess it maybe is because I had been naturally lip reading without being aware of it. It was only when I saw the professor at my ENT clinic who told my mom I was lip reading and went on to demonstrate. I was about 10 years old at the time.

    I believe when you lose a sense you gain another or shall I say heighten another. Lip reading and sense of touch. I can feel when someone enters a room even if I cant see them.

13. lette :
    January 18th, 2007 at 9:57 am

    like me, my lipreading can be fun, but my sence of smell can be a down right curse at times!! handy tho

14. leah (User Verified) :
    January 20th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    i read your comment up above lette, and i know exactly what you mean! sometimes ill say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions i cant really hear and then i realize theyre not yes or no questions! doh! talk about feeling dumb, hehe.

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