Few people with normal hearing stop to consider the daily frustrations faced by the deaf.
One who knows them only too well is Aucklander Mrs Patreena Bryan, 30.
Highly intelligent and widely travelled, Mrs Bryan was born with only 14 per cent hearing. Her parents did not know she was deaf until she was nearly three.
She can “feel” a truck rumble past her home or the beat of a bass drum in a dance-band. She can sometimes hear faint snatches of loudly-played music.
For the rest of the time, her world is silent.
WorriedHer only communication from other people is through lips mouthing soundless words, writing or — among other deaf friends — sign language.
Married for two years, she has a husband whom she has never heard speak and a six-month-old son she has never heard cry.
Worried because she might not know when her baby was distressed, she watched him constantly when he first came home.
She worked out that he usually stirred and cried every 50 minutes or so.
Her one big worry for the future is communication with her son.
“When he’s starting to talk and he doesn’t know I’m deaf, it will be very difficult,” she says.
Mrs Bryan is not sure when she began to realise she was handicapped.
Frustration
“I think it was seeing my mother talking to my brother, three years younger than me. I could see he understood her easier than I did.
“While I could only get one sentence out of what she was saying he seemed to understand it all.”
Television is another source of frustration.
“I can follow TV so far by reading lips, but I have to ask my husband all the time to repeat what the actors said when they turned away from the camera.
“I can follow the news to a certain extent, but I often miss pieces and it leaves you in suspense.
“If people want to know what it’s like to be deaf, just turn the TV sound off in the middle of an exciting play.”
“Deaf Week” starts in Auckland tomorrow. Organisations aiding the deaf are campaigning not for funds but for a keener public awareness of the problem and community resources to meet it.
