trombgirl
New Member
- Joined
- May 20, 2005
- Messages
- 14
- Reaction score
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I originally joined this site back in 2005 when I learned that the hearing in my left ear was starting to decline, but I haven't been here much ever since so I'll reintroduce myself.
My name is Meghan. I'm a 23-year-old college student working my way to becoming a veterinarian. I work at the BEST animal clinic in California. My boss takes care of cats, dogs, birds, reptiles, ferrets, rabbits, tigers, baboons, elephants, almost anything you can think of. It's awesome!!! But grrrr....my loss of hearing is starting to affect my job.
I've been deaf in my right ear since I was 4 months old (meningitus kinda screwed up that ear, my vision, and (as my boyfriend likes to joke) my sainty, lol). I grew up as a normal hearing kid, people never even knew about it until those hearing check trucks rolled in and I had to be sent to the back of the truck for a special test. As I hit high school age I noticed that it was a little harder to pick up conversations so had to announce to everyone that I was half deaf could they please repeat themselves, and some wouldn't repeat themselves louder, slower, or at all... VERY aggravating!!!! So I got along with hearing the gist of conversations and going along, making a few mistakes every now and again. Now, working at the clinic as a tech I MUST be able to hear specifically, did the doctor say to give that bird 0.3ccs or 0.03ccs if baytril IV? Missing a dosage by one decimal place can be fatal. Luckily, unless it's a life threatening emergency case, my boss is very understanding of me coming up to him and asking him to repeat himself or letting me read over his shoulder as he writes the dosage down in the chart. Unfortunately, some of my co-workers are not as nice, and get frustrated at me when they have to repeat multiple times. There's this one, oohhhh, you know those people that just seem to be able to piss EVERYONE off and somehow keep their jobs? I won't get into all the crap this woman has done, but one day I overheard her making fun of me because I had apparently stared at her "vacantly" while I was trying to figure out what she had just said to me. Grrrrrrrrr...She's done even worse, but it's not deaf related so I'll leave it out.
Moving on....I've started to take ASL this semester in school. I have a wonderful teacher who is definately a proud member of the deaf community. After class today some of us stayed back to talk (absolutely NO TALKING during class, I LOVE it) and I got some insight into some of the issues the deaf community faces, like how as of January 1st 2007 ASL interpreters were supposed to be certified, and because so many couldn't pass the test they pushed that rule back to July to give the interpreters time to pass the test. My teacher told us about how even her own first semester ASL students who had barely begun to learn the language let alone be fluent in it were being hired as interpreters. I would have hated to be a deaf child in a hearing school, not having been taught ASL like many aren't AND have a goverment mandated interpreter that barely knew the language themselves. CRAZY!!!!! I think "all deaf schools" are way better. I put that in parenthasis because I learned the sign for it but not the English, our teacher strongly discourages associating sign with English because it is it's own language in and of itself.
Wow, this introduction is getting lengthy. It all boils down to that I'm Meghan, a person currently in transition from the hearing community to the deaf community. I'm very interested in learning more about the half of myself I ignored my whole life. Also, If anyone ever has any animal related questions I'm your girl.
Talk to you all later!
My name is Meghan. I'm a 23-year-old college student working my way to becoming a veterinarian. I work at the BEST animal clinic in California. My boss takes care of cats, dogs, birds, reptiles, ferrets, rabbits, tigers, baboons, elephants, almost anything you can think of. It's awesome!!! But grrrr....my loss of hearing is starting to affect my job.
I've been deaf in my right ear since I was 4 months old (meningitus kinda screwed up that ear, my vision, and (as my boyfriend likes to joke) my sainty, lol). I grew up as a normal hearing kid, people never even knew about it until those hearing check trucks rolled in and I had to be sent to the back of the truck for a special test. As I hit high school age I noticed that it was a little harder to pick up conversations so had to announce to everyone that I was half deaf could they please repeat themselves, and some wouldn't repeat themselves louder, slower, or at all... VERY aggravating!!!! So I got along with hearing the gist of conversations and going along, making a few mistakes every now and again. Now, working at the clinic as a tech I MUST be able to hear specifically, did the doctor say to give that bird 0.3ccs or 0.03ccs if baytril IV? Missing a dosage by one decimal place can be fatal. Luckily, unless it's a life threatening emergency case, my boss is very understanding of me coming up to him and asking him to repeat himself or letting me read over his shoulder as he writes the dosage down in the chart. Unfortunately, some of my co-workers are not as nice, and get frustrated at me when they have to repeat multiple times. There's this one, oohhhh, you know those people that just seem to be able to piss EVERYONE off and somehow keep their jobs? I won't get into all the crap this woman has done, but one day I overheard her making fun of me because I had apparently stared at her "vacantly" while I was trying to figure out what she had just said to me. Grrrrrrrrr...She's done even worse, but it's not deaf related so I'll leave it out.
Moving on....I've started to take ASL this semester in school. I have a wonderful teacher who is definately a proud member of the deaf community. After class today some of us stayed back to talk (absolutely NO TALKING during class, I LOVE it) and I got some insight into some of the issues the deaf community faces, like how as of January 1st 2007 ASL interpreters were supposed to be certified, and because so many couldn't pass the test they pushed that rule back to July to give the interpreters time to pass the test. My teacher told us about how even her own first semester ASL students who had barely begun to learn the language let alone be fluent in it were being hired as interpreters. I would have hated to be a deaf child in a hearing school, not having been taught ASL like many aren't AND have a goverment mandated interpreter that barely knew the language themselves. CRAZY!!!!! I think "all deaf schools" are way better. I put that in parenthasis because I learned the sign for it but not the English, our teacher strongly discourages associating sign with English because it is it's own language in and of itself.
Wow, this introduction is getting lengthy. It all boils down to that I'm Meghan, a person currently in transition from the hearing community to the deaf community. I'm very interested in learning more about the half of myself I ignored my whole life. Also, If anyone ever has any animal related questions I'm your girl.
Talk to you all later!
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