Somewhat Silent

I don’t own a TTY. I haven’t since I started owning a computer. My reasons are simple: I never need one. I can make phone calls with internet relay. It works. Simple.

Until I need to be able to have someone call ME. Then it all breaks down.

This week I almost had to bring my 6 month old son to the ER for… Mosquito bites. All because I didn’t have a TTY that his pediatrician could call back from, and they don’t have a number that you can call to talk to a pediatrician- just a number that you can call, leave your number, and a pediatrician will get back to you within the hour.

My son had three mosquito bites that had developed a large rash around them, and he had a slight fever (most likely due to teething) and I was concerned. But because I didn’t have a TTY, I had two options: Wait until my husband came home from work, or trek a half mile in the NYC heatwave, to sit in the ER for a few hours around Very Sick People.

Not wanting to expose my son to something potentially worse than what he already had, I gave him a cool bath and waited for my husband to come home.

My husband came home and called the pediatrician’s number, left his number, heard back from them 20 minutes later that all was fine and no need to bring the little guy into the ER unless the rash persisted, got worse, or the fever rose.

I wish the internet would catch up enough for me to be able to take incoming relay calls, and not just make outgoing ones. Maybe I can convince Skype to make a SkypeTTY?

I could buy a TTY. But this is the only time I’ve ever needed to accept an incoming phonecall in the past 7 years. A $500 piece of equipment that will be used once in 7 years is obscenely high priced. It would make more financial sense for me to pay someone to accept a phone call for me and transcribe it. :p