Tag: Daytona Beach

Life and Deaf – Choices

Sorry for the long delay. I’ve been recuperating from a long illness. Onward!

We spend the next two weekends breaking the news of Scooter’s profound hearing loss face-to-face with our parents. First St. Augustine, the site of State School for the Deaf and Blind, where daddy Ray was born and his father and stepmother still live. Grandma Trudie used to work at the school and holds it in high regard. My heart sinks as I listen to her description. “Sugar, this is where the experts are. The staff knows what’s best for those sweet handicapped kids. They’re well taken care of, around others just like them and will be protected, not bullied.”

Every word she says makes my heart sink lower. Protected? Boarded? Caged like animals? “Uuhh, I’m sure it’s a good school. Maybe it’s an option.” I’m not ready to give up my firstborn, beautiful son that easily. “I’ve got lots of researching and learning to do first.”

“Oh honey, I meant no harm,” Trudie stammered. “Just givin’ you an option. And I have some experience here.”

“I understand and appreciate your thoughts, but I know the philosophy of the St. Augustine school. They believe in the age old method of American Sign Language. I know it’s given deaf people a way to pull themselves out of the mire of “deaf and dumb” and given them a language of their own, but I want to give Scooter a chance to fit the best that he can into the hearing world by learning to listen and speak.”

I find out about a group in California called the Tracy Clinic, named after Spencer Tracy and his wife who also have a deaf child. They stress treating your child as any other, getting him fitted for the best hearing aids if there’s any residual hearing, and at the same time saturating him with language in a normal household.

The correspondence course is offered free as long as the lessons are followed and a feedback letter returned. Scooter at 2 years old, has a single hearing aid, and is definitely speech delayed. The best and most important advice saturating these lessons is Talk, Talk, Talk; making sure he can see our lips to practice lip reading. We stick bright simple signs on everything in the house for visual stimulation. The key – work with everything you’ve got and give it all you’ve got. And that’s the basis of Ray’s Auditory/Oral Education.

We find a support group of parents in Daytona Beach area dedicated to the oral approach, start making friends and getting positive feedback. Friendship and exchange with these families is probably the most important step up out of the mire of doubt and depression. We finally are getting to know people going through the same thing  giving us hope, support, answering our questions, laughing and crying with us.

Next time: Teaching Scooter (Ray)

 

Rubella Jill

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Ft Bliss Texas – Part Two

From Wikipedia, “There was a pandemic of rubella between 1962 and 1965, starting in Europe and spreading to the United States. In the years 1964-65, the United States had an estimated 12.5 million rubella cases. This led to 11,000 miscarriages or therapeutic abortions and 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome. Of these, 2,100 died as neonates, 12,000 were deaf, 3,580 were blind and 1,800 were mentally retarded. In New York alone, CRS affected 1% of all births. In 1969 a live attenuated virus vaccine was licensed. In the early 1970s, a triple vaccine containing attenuated measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) viruses was introduced.”

Staring at myself in the mirror, tears running down my spotty face, getting rashier by the second. I call Ray.  “It’s German Measles”.

“Don’t get upset. It could be something else. Let’s get you to the doctor. Then check at school and see if any kids have it.”

I scream, “It’s fucking German Measles!” My mind empties. I can’t focus. My heart slams against the mesh of my lungs, vibrating the rash all over me, burning my skin, my eyes. Sucking my tears dry. I wade through the weekend making calls for help. Nobody can. The principal says “your student Bobby’s sick. His grandfather, who’s a doctor, said he’s come down with Rubella.” I moan. Why did he have to be in my class, the only pregnant teacher in the school?

”The base clinic says, “Come in Monday for a Gamma Globulin shot. It’s all we’ve got.”

I reply trembling, “Let’s do it.”

I sit in the waiting room. Looking up, away from myself, I see several obviously pregnant women surrounding me. A scene from a recent “Monkey Virus Infects the World” movie flashes before my eyes. I jump up to the desk. “I can’t stay here.” I whisper. The whole place ‘ll panic. I’ll get stoned. I mouth “German Measles.” They grab and isolate me in an examining room. Typhoid Mary! Another blow. They jam in the needle of gamma globulin. I cry, “What good will it do?” They don’t know. Maybe stop the rampage? Maybe nothing?

I  falter, check into abortions; only legal in two states, New York and Arizona. I can’t do it. I’m too late, too far along, too far away. The doctors try to be reassuring, “all the big stuff is developed by three months, except hearing.”

Living on base, finishing out the school year, preparing to leave Ft. Bliss, all is a blur, a void. My first child, that happy experience we haven’t really planned for, has taken a turn of foreboding.

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Ray studying the stock market at Ft. Bliss

It’s 1967. In the next few months our lives change drastically.  The first decision is Ray’s. Taking the lead from my father, a very successful investor, he’s been studying the stock market, during his years of armed service preparing for a short internship on Wall Street and the ensuing SEC exam. A family friend has offered him a job in Daytona Beach, Florida with the prestigious firm, Merrill Lynch, pending his successful completion.

A bout of morning sickness makes me fully aware of my pregnancy in all its glory and distress. Being of strong body and positive nature I keep my apprehensions at bay and concentrate on a healthy beautiful baby. After a short visit home with our families on the Gulf Coast we cross the state to begin our new life and find a sweet house in a family neighborhood half a block from the beach. I find an OB/GYN who tells me not to worry my pretty little head about the German Measles epidemic. Everything will be fine. I want to remain in the sheep-following stage of the 50’s, wanting to believe the “Doctor knows best”, and ask no more questions.

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Cars on Daytona Beach

Although student protests are beginning, first over segregation, then over the war in Viet Nam, Texas and Florida lag behind. The schools in Florida are just beginning to integrate. The medical community lags too. At Halifax Hospital where my son is born on Oct. 21, fathers aren’t even allowed on the Obstetrics floor. They have to wait in the lobby downstairs. I’m given a shot of painkiller as soon as the labor is strong and regular. No one asks me if I want it. Natural childbirth is out of fashion with the advent of strong painkillers. My one question about the possible damage to the fetus is answered with, “We’ll do a hearing test along with the other birth assessments.”

Next Time – Child Birth