Thank you for joining and sharing your life, experiences and hopes/wishes for your happy future/demise, however you have planned it out, or not. As I said before you make me feel very humble in your acceptance of your future and I hope that should it come to it I would be as accepting and happy to end my journey as I would have had wished.
On another tack, I taught in FE for 26 years before I took early retirement at age 50. During that time I was the only one in the section who would teach deaf students in a class with hearing students! The boys with hearing impairment (they preferred to be called deaf, which I agreed with) would leave their hearing aids in the bags and then there would be a high pitched whistling throughout the whole lesson. College wouldn't pay for the training for signing, so over 4 years the deaf students taught me BSL! At the end of the day they achieved results equal to the hearing students, and a few romantic liaisons took place!!
Best wishes for whatever and for however long the future holds for you and one that you feel happy and comfortable with. In awe of your tenacity. Hope for all our futures! Mxx
Hat high pitched whistling brings back memories. I seems to have always interrupted lessons with my hearing aids whistling. Have you ever heard of the old black and white movie with Jack Hawkins? Was called Mandy. The mother against her husband ‘s wishes sent her to a deaf boarding school. Mandy was like a Helen Kella of her day. There was a balloon in one scene. They tried it for vibration in order to try and get Mandy to feel speech. Well. When my mum realised I was deaf, she remembered that scene. But she had the brainwave of thinking my cheeks were like a balloon, so she started putting her lips on my cheeks and speaking to me and teaching me to speak. Problem was...she did it too well. It took 7 years to get my deafness recognised. They thought my speech was normal, so therefore I wasn’t deaf. But a operation shortly before my 8th birthday proved my deafness. Love and admire my mum.
I once taught a little boy in year 2 with an hearing impairment. He was 6 and had cochlear implants. Absolutely amazing things that enabled him to a achieve the same if not more than his peers. He and his friends referred to his implants as his 'super power’. Technology is amazing.
Thanks. My mum is wonderful. The Cochlear implant is still controversial among the deaf people. Always has. Lots of deaf people see it’s a invasion of deafness, that it’s corrects deafness. This is the pro deaf groups. They don’t see it as a hearing aid. And I’ve learnt to not mention it among deaf people. No matter how much I just say it’s a hearing aid, we take it off at night, they refuse to see it that way. But the Ropewalk house in Nottingham had made it clear to me that a cochlear implant is considered a last resort, when all options are no longer available. Most people don’t realise that’s controversial due to the fact that the nerve is cut once that happens, they cannot reverse the operation. Also due to the fact that the nerve is too close to the facial nerve, there is a big risk of damaging the facial nerve. The operation comes with a risk of Bell’s palsy.i had the chance many years ago of it but the NHS finance wouldn’t pay for the operation. Now it’s too late. My hearing is dead. But I’m please to hear some good about the implant. I wonder how he is now?
