Deaf Note
Heather Leigh Whitestone-McCallum -- thank goodness I was on a mood for ear-research today. Only just discovered her. She was crowned in 1995, a full four years before I got wind of meningitis. She's the only deaf Miss America and now right next to Helen Keller on my favorite deaf people list.
"The Certificate in Sign Language Interpreting shall be a one-year post secondary program especially designed for any hearing person who has the burden to help the deaf understand the world that surrounds them. This aims to professionalize sign language interpreting in our country and to train professional interpreters."
-- found this in Manila Christian Computer Institute for the Deaf. Maybe they didn't notice it. Maybe I should apply as polite copywriter? And while I'm at it, maybe I can also suggest to them to add Creative Writing courses? Computers are for writing as much as for designing websites... :D
A prime candidate (for cochlear implant) is described as:
"Post-lingually deaf adults, pre-lingually deaf children and post-lingually impaired people (usually children) who have lost hearing due to diseases such as meningitis form three distinct groups of potential users of cochlear implants with different needs and outcomes. Those who have lost their hearing as adults were the first group to find cochlear implants useful, in regaining some comprehension of speech and other sounds. If an individual has been deaf for a long period of time, the brain may begin using the area of the brain typically used for hearing for other functions. If such a person receives a cochlear implant, the sounds can be very disorienting, and the brain often will struggle to readapt to sound."
-- from Wikipedia. Woot! Should be interesting to undergo a cochlear implant. And ugh, I really hate meningitis. There should be a vaccine. If there is, people should get it. In cancer, you get to prepare to lose something... in meningitis, you go into shock, wake up and go into shock again because a big whack's been done to your existence.
"As with every medical procedure, the surgery (CI) involves a certain amount of risk; in this case, the risks include skin infection, onset of tinnitus, damage to the vestibular system, and damage to facial nerves that can cause muscle weakness, impaired facial sensation, or, in the worst cases, disfiguring facial paralysis."
-- still from good ol' Wiki. Don't you love Wikipedia? When I'm rich, I'll be a sponsor. :D
"In 2003, the CDC and FDA announced that children with cochlear implants are at a slightly increased risk of bacterial meningitis (Reefhuis 2003). Though this risk is very small, it is still 30 times higher than children in the general population, without proper immunizations. The CDC and other national health organisations (such as the UK) now follow the practice of providing prophylactic vaccination against pneumococcal meningitis."
-- this is the meningitis I was talking about, the same guy who sideswiped me a decade ago. The doctors at the hospital I was confined in called it TB meningitis. As in, tuberculosis meningitis. Pneumococcal, men.
You get bacterial meningitis from an ear infection. Meningitis is the inflammation of the meninges, the membrane between our skull and brain. There's an iota of sense in the joke that people with excessive earwax are oozing their brains out. Before I got ill, I was biking in the school grounds. Something-- an insect or maybe a little fairy-- was probably also joyriding and unfortunately slid into my ear. The pain was brilliant and enduring. I was crying during Mass later that evening. It was Sunday.
We didn't recover the insect/fairy. Years later though, I found gauzy things stuck to the q-tip I'd used.
"British Member of Parliament Jack Ashley received a cochlear implant in 1994 at age 70 after 25 years of deafness, and reported that he has no trouble speaking to people he knows; whether one on one or even on the telephone, although he might have difficulty with a new voice or with a busy conversation, and still had to rely to some extent on lipreading. He described the robotic sound of human voices perceived through the cochlear implant as "a croaking dalek with laryngitis". Another recipient described the initial sounds as similar to radio static and voices as being cartoonish, though after a year with the implant she said everything sounded right.[25] Even modern cochlear implants have at most 24 electrodes to replace the 16,000 delicate hair cells that are used for normal hearing. However, the sound quality delivered by a cochlear implant is often good enough that many users do not have to rely on lipreading."
-- LOL. I don't know how a dalek sounds, but I did imagine Donald Duck when I was told about the cartoonish-ness.
US$45,000 to US$105,000 -- er, wow. We'll think about this... :D
"The Certificate in Sign Language Interpreting shall be a one-year post secondary program especially designed for any hearing person who has the burden to help the deaf understand the world that surrounds them. This aims to professionalize sign language interpreting in our country and to train professional interpreters."
-- found this in Manila Christian Computer Institute for the Deaf. Maybe they didn't notice it. Maybe I should apply as polite copywriter? And while I'm at it, maybe I can also suggest to them to add Creative Writing courses? Computers are for writing as much as for designing websites... :D
A prime candidate (for cochlear implant) is described as:
- having severe to profound sensorineural hearing impairment in both ears.
- having a functioning auditory nerve
- having lived at least a short amount of time without hearing (approximately 70+ decibel hearing loss, on average)
- having good speech, language, and communication skills, or in the case of infants and young children, having a family willing to work toward speech and language skills with therapy
- not benefiting enough from other kinds of hearing aids
- having no medical reason to avoid surgery
- living in or desiring to live in the "hearing world"
- having realistic expectations about results
- having the support of family and friends
- having appropriate services set up for post-cochlear implant aural rehabilitation (through a speech language pathologist, deaf educator, or auditory verbal therapist).
"Post-lingually deaf adults, pre-lingually deaf children and post-lingually impaired people (usually children) who have lost hearing due to diseases such as meningitis form three distinct groups of potential users of cochlear implants with different needs and outcomes. Those who have lost their hearing as adults were the first group to find cochlear implants useful, in regaining some comprehension of speech and other sounds. If an individual has been deaf for a long period of time, the brain may begin using the area of the brain typically used for hearing for other functions. If such a person receives a cochlear implant, the sounds can be very disorienting, and the brain often will struggle to readapt to sound."
-- from Wikipedia. Woot! Should be interesting to undergo a cochlear implant. And ugh, I really hate meningitis. There should be a vaccine. If there is, people should get it. In cancer, you get to prepare to lose something... in meningitis, you go into shock, wake up and go into shock again because a big whack's been done to your existence.
"As with every medical procedure, the surgery (CI) involves a certain amount of risk; in this case, the risks include skin infection, onset of tinnitus, damage to the vestibular system, and damage to facial nerves that can cause muscle weakness, impaired facial sensation, or, in the worst cases, disfiguring facial paralysis."
-- still from good ol' Wiki. Don't you love Wikipedia? When I'm rich, I'll be a sponsor. :D
"In 2003, the CDC and FDA announced that children with cochlear implants are at a slightly increased risk of bacterial meningitis (Reefhuis 2003). Though this risk is very small, it is still 30 times higher than children in the general population, without proper immunizations. The CDC and other national health organisations (such as the UK) now follow the practice of providing prophylactic vaccination against pneumococcal meningitis."
-- this is the meningitis I was talking about, the same guy who sideswiped me a decade ago. The doctors at the hospital I was confined in called it TB meningitis. As in, tuberculosis meningitis. Pneumococcal, men.
You get bacterial meningitis from an ear infection. Meningitis is the inflammation of the meninges, the membrane between our skull and brain. There's an iota of sense in the joke that people with excessive earwax are oozing their brains out. Before I got ill, I was biking in the school grounds. Something-- an insect or maybe a little fairy-- was probably also joyriding and unfortunately slid into my ear. The pain was brilliant and enduring. I was crying during Mass later that evening. It was Sunday.
We didn't recover the insect/fairy. Years later though, I found gauzy things stuck to the q-tip I'd used.
"British Member of Parliament Jack Ashley received a cochlear implant in 1994 at age 70 after 25 years of deafness, and reported that he has no trouble speaking to people he knows; whether one on one or even on the telephone, although he might have difficulty with a new voice or with a busy conversation, and still had to rely to some extent on lipreading. He described the robotic sound of human voices perceived through the cochlear implant as "a croaking dalek with laryngitis". Another recipient described the initial sounds as similar to radio static and voices as being cartoonish, though after a year with the implant she said everything sounded right.[25] Even modern cochlear implants have at most 24 electrodes to replace the 16,000 delicate hair cells that are used for normal hearing. However, the sound quality delivered by a cochlear implant is often good enough that many users do not have to rely on lipreading."
-- LOL. I don't know how a dalek sounds, but I did imagine Donald Duck when I was told about the cartoonish-ness.
US$45,000 to US$105,000 -- er, wow. We'll think about this... :D