My friend Janelle saw this in Time Magazine.
For $75.00, a pair of Enable Talk gloves helps you communicate your needs to those who do not know or understand Sign Language. I wish I had a pair of these when I recently had my surgery. I was unable to communicate with the nurses. I scarcely had a voice, it was painful to talk, to swallow, not only did my throat hurt, my neck hurt. I just wanted to sleep.
When one particular nurse tried to communicate with me regarding the medicines, I couldn't write, or even concentrate enough to tell her just give me the morphine first, wait, then let me try to take the pills they expected me to swallow. She tried to give me both at the same time. I tried to sign to her, "Sorry, hard to talk throat hurts". She thought I was complaining of chest pain. I got frustrated, cried and just closed my eyes. I was alone, unable to communicate with her and in horrible pain.
It was awful. There was supposed to be an interpreter there when I woke up. In fact, we had arranged ahead of time for interpreters, but no one ever showed up. I would suggest every doctor's office, hospital, every business to invest in a pair of these gloves for your deaf and hard of hearing clients, patients and customers.
http://techland.time.com/2012/11/01/best-inventions-of-the-year-2012/slide/enable-talk-gloves/
I wish I had a pair of these when I was in the hospital.
For $75.00, a pair of Enable Talk gloves helps you communicate your needs to those who do not know or understand Sign Language. I wish I had a pair of these when I recently had my surgery. I was unable to communicate with the nurses. I scarcely had a voice, it was painful to talk, to swallow, not only did my throat hurt, my neck hurt. I just wanted to sleep.
When one particular nurse tried to communicate with me regarding the medicines, I couldn't write, or even concentrate enough to tell her just give me the morphine first, wait, then let me try to take the pills they expected me to swallow. She tried to give me both at the same time. I tried to sign to her, "Sorry, hard to talk throat hurts". She thought I was complaining of chest pain. I got frustrated, cried and just closed my eyes. I was alone, unable to communicate with her and in horrible pain.
It was awful. There was supposed to be an interpreter there when I woke up. In fact, we had arranged ahead of time for interpreters, but no one ever showed up. I would suggest every doctor's office, hospital, every business to invest in a pair of these gloves for your deaf and hard of hearing clients, patients and customers.
http://techland.time.com/2012/11/01/best-inventions-of-the-year-2012/slide/enable-talk-gloves/
I wish I had a pair of these when I was in the hospital.
Communications for health care is such an important topic! Thanks for this blog about your own experiences. Realtime captioning is another solution, e.g. many know to ask for an interpreter if they use signing, yet so many more who have hearing loss and do not sign don't know about CART pro's who are - should be- available equally in the hospital. Yet as you say, whatever one asks for and needs, luck is part of it.
ReplyDeleteLauren/http://ccacaptioning.org