Making Sense in Sign: A Lifeline for a Deaf Child (Parents' and Teachers' Guides, . No. 6) - Softcover

Froude, Jenny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853596280 ISBN 13: 9781853596285

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Language which develops 'against all the odds' is very precious. Words were not enough for Tom; it was signs that made sense of a world silenced by meningitis. Confidence came via joyful and positive steps to communication from babyhood; a brush with epilepsy, a cochlear implant in his teens and life as an independent young adult followed.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jenny Froude was a journalist on Womanâ??s Weekly before retiring to have a longed-for family. New communication skills were needed when the youngest was deafened by meningitis at 5 months. The years that followed were a steep but lovely learning curve! She studied Signed English and worked as an SSA in a Senior Hearing Impairment Unit for four years.

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Making Sense in Sign

A Lifeline for a Deaf Child

By Jenny Froude

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2003 Jenny Froude
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-85359-628-5

Contents

Introduction, vii, 
Acknowledgements, viii, 
1 The Time of Crisis, 1, 
2 Deafness may Result, 12, 
3 Take My Hands and Let Them Move, 24, 
4 Channels of Communication, 39, 
5 Good Times – Bad Times, 51, 
6 Coping and Caring, 71, 
7 Growing Up, 80, 
8 Sound or Silence?, 98, 
9 Staying Strong, 108, 
10 The Big Adventure, 118, 
11 Language for Life, 128, 
12 Borneo and Beyond, 145, 
13 What is Deaf?, 153, 
14 Paths to Understanding, 160, 
Appendix 1: A Letter to a Deaf Son 'Yellow is a Lovely Word to See', 167, 
Appendix 2: A Second Letter to a Deaf Son, 169, 
Appendix 3: Some Useful Addresses, 171, 
Appendix 4: Glossary, 175, 
References, 177, 
Index, 179, 

CHAPTER 1

The Time of Crisis

The depths of human affection and kindness are not plumbed without a crisis. (Jack Ashley, 1973)

I don't know whether you know what an enormous volume of prayers and goodwill goes out to you from everyone who knew you at Woman's Weekly. I hope it helps you a little. (Gaye Allen, Home Editor)

I shall never forget the August 1980 Bank Holiday. All weekend I had been irritable and depressed for no apparent reason. Strange, since the weather was good, our three children all well and PMT isn't a problem when one's breast-feeding and the hormones aren't back to normal. But I couldn't shake off a feeling of impending doom. It even prompted me to search a cupboard, desperately trying to find an article from Good Housekeeping magazine which had haunted me some years previously, about a mother whose first child died shortly after birth. I found it and read it again, to this day I have no idea why, and hoped my husband wouldn't notice the tears which flowed just as they had done the first time I saw it.

On the Monday we went to visit a neighbour. Thomas had a slightly runny nose. Joan took him on her lap with the words 'Goodness me, Thomas, five months old and this is the first time I've had a real cuddle'. He smiled in his usual merry way.

All afternoon he slept in his pram in the garden. He had refused a feed at lunchtime. I put it down to teething. In the evening he started to whimper and lay on my shoulder. I still put it down to teething but I did look up meningitis in the medical dictionary. At that time it was not an illness given a high profile; most of us were blissfully unaware of it. But I had recently heard of a baby, born to a couple who had almost given up hope of a child of their own, who had developed meningitis at the age of six weeks and was dangerously ill. The story haunted me, especially since we ourselves had been married for 11 years before our first child was born and had known something of the heartache of apparent infertility. I couldn't get that baby out of my mind, even though the family were not local and were unknown to me personally.

Since his birth, Thomas had always slept in a Liberty-lawn-lined wicker crib beside our bed. He was just outgrowing it and I was preparing him for the transition to the big cot in his own room by putting him in there at bedtime and bringing him in to us for a feed and to sleep the remainder of the night in our room. It had only happened once and already I had felt a shudder go through me at the sight of the empty crib when I went to bed. It had made me think what it must feel like to have a cot death; the sense of separation was so appalling.

But on that fateful Bank Holiday evening I put Thomas to bed beside us in the old way. He woke for a feed at 5 a.m. Three hours later he was pale, unhappy and couldn't bear to be touched. I rang the doctor and put Thomas in the pram downstairs, beside me. It was a beautiful, hot morning. I envisaged a sun-filled day in the garden for us all.

Our GP, a gruff, ex-army doctor, approaching retirement, called. He rang Farnborough Hospital immediately and asked to speak to the paediatrician. I don't remember what he said, apart from 'I don't like the noise he's making'. An ambulance was summoned to take us straightaway.

'Is it meningitis?', I asked. 'Could be, could be', he muttered, 'there's a lot of it about'.

Matthew and Daniel, six and five years old, were left with their grannie who, luckily, had a flat at the top of our house. I grabbed a cardigan for me and a shawl for the baby and we left. It was to be three weeks before we returned home together.

Meningitis Confirmed

During the journey and on arrival Tom's eyes hardly left my face but as soon as we got into the isolation ward he started having fits. It was eleven days since his second immunisation against diptheria and tetanus but the registrar felt there was no connection with his present state. I can only cling to the hope that she was correct. A lumbar puncture revealed pneumococcal meningitis. His sparse, blonde hair was shaved and lines inserted to carry the vital antibiotics. I had to break the appalling news to my husband, John, at work.

By the evening, in great discomfort, I asked if there was somewhere I could go to express my milk. I remember the consultant paediatrician stopping in her tracks. She felt we were so very, very unlucky to have a breastfed baby in this state. And, because of the nature of Tom's illness, my milk was of no use to the Special Care Baby Unit. The only time I'd had milk to spare and it had to be poured away.

In my shock I am sure most of my questions were silly ones. How long would we be in hospital? Could the bacteria have lain dormant for some time, undetected, remembering the particularly persistent and violent headache and feverish feelings I'd suffered only two weeks after his birth? The gravity of the situation had not really sunk in. We were told that Thomas was a very sick little boy and that the next 48 hours would be critical. Irrationally, I began to feel I had somehow wished this dreadful illness on him, simply by my preoccupation with that other, unknown infant whose meningitis had so preyed on my mind.

A camp bed was made up for me in the tiny room. I must have dozed off eventually, only to be awoken in the middle of the night by the registrar expressing her concern about Tom. She had called a colleague over from Sydenham Children's Hospital; Thomas was fitting dreadfully. I asked if these fits would lead to brain damage in the future? His grave reply – 'I don't think we should be thinking too much about the future tonight' – tore at my heart. I wanted to phone my husband but was told there was no need, yet ...

Later that night, as I sat expressing more milk in an empty room along the corridor, I heard footsteps and then the voice of a nurse asking the words I'd been dreading I'd hear all day: 'Mother, has this baby been baptised?'

Oh, the relief, despite my despair, of being able to answer in the affirmative. Thomas's baptism at Beckenham Parish Church had been a joyous occasion some two months previously, attended by family, godparents, some of our dearest friends. The sun had shone. Thomas's behaviour had been just perfect. We had just had the photographs developed. The only thing that had struck me about them was how frail he looked in his long white gown. How slender his neck. How like photos of his elder brother, Matthew, at the same age. And Matthew has a mental handicap for no known reason. Were we going to see the same with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1853596280
• ISBN 13: 9781853596285
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 190
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland