So I've mentioned my long - suffering husband in previous posts, but something I haven't spoken about is the fact that we share something large in common... he's also hard of hearing! I give him full credit for keeping me sane with this disability, there's something extremely comforting about the fact that he knows exactly how I am feeling in certain situations without me saying a thing.
Some background : Hubby has profound bilateral hearing loss (if you remember from my previous posts that means he has a 90+ decibel loss in both ears, so quite a lot more than me). He wears two behind the ear hearing aids which largely help him to function normally however he struggles a LOT more than I do in noisy situations. To put it into perspective he is completely deaf without his aids in unlike me who can hear noise still. Yet, he plays rugby, coaches and is a primary school teacher so like me, he loves to challenge the stereotype. You can usually tell he's HoH as he has that 'Deaf accent' I spoke about before.
While it's great having someone who understands what I'm going through it leads to an interesting home life. Like the fact that I can have entire conversations with him before I realise he hasn't heard a word I said because his aids were out. Or shouting matches from different rooms. My favourite saying to him is "stop being deaf, it's just rude" which leads to open mouth reactions from others but we just laugh about it. An entire tornado can rip through our house at night and he'd sleep peacefully through, so the dog has learnt I'm a better target if he needs to go out at night! (I often wake up Hubby to do this so I don't have to. My favourite is that it is dark so he can't see me and yet he asks me questions that he can't hear the answer to, leaving me gesticulating wildly shouting even though I know he can't hear me). It also gives him the excuse when watching rugby to say he didn't hear me because he's deaf. Except as most women will agree with me on, there's a big difference between hearing and LISTENING!
It's mostly through Hubby that I've been introduced to the extreme prejudices of society. I often operate as his ears and mouthpiece out in public as I am a fluent lipreader while he isn't. It doesn't mean he can't do things without me, it just means things go faster if I do the talking. But what frustrates me is when people realise his disability and then ignore him only focusing on me. A good example, we were at a local pet food store buying food for our fur children. We get to the counter and Hubby gives the lady his card. She asked him which account he wanted and due to her quiet voice he asked her to repeat herself. When he missed it for the second time, I stepped in and repeated it louder for his sake. From that moment the cashier completely ignored him, giving me the machine for the pin (which I handed to him) and then giving the card back to me (handed to him again). I was really confused before I realised that she just saw me as the easier option. It happens quite a lot when we go out and I get more and more annoyed. Ignorance is insulting, deaf does not equal dumb and disabilities do not make you helpless. I just wish more people would understand this.
No comments:
Post a Comment