Wednesday 6th August 2008 - An understanding came

I had another one of those CI negative days. I could not understand what the guy was saying to me at the Toyota garage when I took my car in to be serviced and that I had to ask him again and again to repeat for me. Also a reception desk where the staff are usually so deaf aware, didn’t look at me when they spoke to me and I didn’t understand what she was saying so had to ask her to repeat several times as she repeated whilst still looking down and then she realised she was meant to look at me and then I was then able to understand her. I felt frustrated with the hearing world today. Why does the hearing world today feel they expect me to follow everything that is being said and I don’t need to lip-read anymore. I feel as though I am banging my head against a brick wall with some people over this and the constant need to remind some people that although I am hearing quite a bit of environmental sounds, I still CANNOT follow speech still. In frustration I refused to wear the CI all morning. Then something suddenly clicked. An understanding came. I suddenly understood why I was ok in some situations (listening practice sessions and basic conversation on the phone with a good friend and my Mum) and not in others. I suddenly realised that it depends on the type of environment and whether it is a controlled environment or an uncontrolled environment! I would define a controlled environment places where communication is adapted to meet my needs as a result of my deafness, like speaking in a quiet room, one to one, using FM and the speaker being extremely Deaf aware and knows exactly how to speak to me and what words to use as well as knowing me well and I know them well. I would define an uncontrolled environment, places where I have no control over what goes on there. This would be the big wider hearing world where there are groups of 2 people or more, places where there is background noise, reverbation, people not being Deaf aware, not looking tat me and other distractions that will make communication with deafness more difficult. That was the key to my problem, to be able to recognise where exactly my problems lie and my problem lies within the uncontrolled environment of the hearing world.

I mentioned this to some of my friends and they were really good at listening to me. We then came up with a few reasons as to why I find the hearing world culture and communication so hard.

In groups in the Deaf world, communication is visual – we use facial expressions and lip-reading as well as sign language. We have to sit in a way where we can all see each other and make a point to make sure everyone could see what was going on.

In groups in the hearing world, sign language isn’t used. Nor do people think about where to position themselves to make sure their faces can be seen. So therefore I completely rely on the person looking at me so then I can read lips and facial expressions. But naturally in the hearing world, they don’t just look at one person when they talk. My problem is my communication abruptly comes to an end once someone breaks the eye contact when communication is happening and is not looking at me. This is the difficulty that I need to deal with and is an uncontrolled situation.

Also again we go back to the fact that with the CI, I am aware of people talking, but am unable to make sense of what is being said due to the reasons as stated above. I now understand the very area where my difficulty is and am now in a better situation to explain to those people with no or minimal deaf awareness to explain why I seem to communicate better in some situations and not in others. After our interesting chat, one of my friends then forced me to wear the CI for the rest of the day as I need to wear it as much as possible so that my brain can takes it time to identify the skills I need for uncontrolled environments through trial and error.

We also have more ideas for listening practices. Currently these are still on a controlled one to one basis. These need to widen to include a whole range of communication skills, tasks and games including describing things, doing quizzes, drawing things under instruction, listening for directions etc. Once I have covered a wide area of these and can communicate fluently and at ease, then we will then start to introduce the elements of an uncontrolled environment one at a time so that I can work out skills on how to deal with each of the elements. Such elements include an additional person in the group for group communication, back ground noise etc. it was suggested then after that, I should go and observe a meeting at work that is not important to me without an interpreter between 2 members of staff to see what exactly I can pick out from that meeting by trying to lip-read what is being said and make a note of the things I have actually picked up.

One of my friends suggested that I write a list of things that I can hear / do now that I couldn’t a year ago to remind me how much the CI is actually doing for me. Just as I was feeling so low at the CI, when I got home I received a lovely card from my CI surgeon thanking me for my card and for coming to his retirement party and he was pleased to hear that I was making good progress. That lifted me up again.