Hospital Experiences

I was just reading in a deaf blog about this one person's experience in going to a hospital. Anything medical is usually a scary experience for the deaf.

Last winter I had a knee replacement which was planned far in advance. This operation required a 4-day hospital stay. It is major surgery and it hurts like heck.

I had an interpreter for pre-op and post-op. That was it. Then when I finally wound up in a room, I discovered I had no closed captioned t.v. I let it be plain that this was NOT acceptable. On the 2nd day of recovery I found that I was getting pretty hungry, everyone got to eat except me! Puzzled I finally asked one of the staff and she replied, "You have to call the kitchen on the telephone and tell them what you want." Well, we got THAT problem straightened out and then they wheeled me to another room that DID have cc t.v. I shared the t.v. with a 14 year old girl who watched Nick At Night 24/7. 'Later the nurse handed me a telephone and told me that my husband wanted to talk to me. On the 3rd day (of four) the hospital chaplain finally showed up with a TTY. He looked so pleased with himself that I did not have the heart to tell him that he was at least 10 years behind the times!