After my final dialysis, I was moved from the ICU to a recovery room in another ward, and remained there for the next eleven days. It was within those first 24 to 48 hours in the recovery room that we all began to realize I had a significant hearing loss.
The doctors noticed it when they came to check on me. They would ask me questions I couldn’t hear.
The nurses at the nurse’s station also noticed it when I pushed the call button, but would not respond to their inquiring voices.
The orderlies noticed it when they came to change my bed sheets and asked me to roll over. They would have to nudge me the way they wanted me to roll because I wasn’t following directions.
The kitchen staff noticed my hearing impairment when they came to take my order for meals. Because I couldn’t hear the choices, they started giving me the menu to mark myself.
The nurse’s aides noticed my hearing loss when they came to help me with my bedpan and I wouldn’t answer when they asked me if I needed toilet paper. I was frequently left there to drip dry!
In the next couple of days, I noticed how words were muffled as Mama tried to tell me how my brothers and sisters had kept constant vigil in the waiting room nearby, along with a dozen or so of my high school friends and my large group of extended relatives. I missed the names of those she told me had come and gone while I was asleep or unaware. She had to use the guest book to show me who she was talking about because I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
She wrote down the names of those who had sent cards and left money to help defer medical expenses, and who had made donations to our church in my name. She had to repeat herself several times as she told me of the many prayers that were being said for me around the world, and that the family had really pulled together in unity to support me, and each other, during this time.
We both acknowledged my hearing loss, yet we also both believed it was only temporary and would probably clear up once I got better.
But it didn’t.
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking….
….words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed in the wells
of silence…”
~ Simon and Garfield ~
The Sound of Silence
Hi LaRonda!
What an amazing story and gift you have given us by remembering it and retelling it so well, and vividly, with such love and grief. I can just feel the sense of it! …. It is the FIRST BLOG I HAVE EVER READ! and it is probably one of the best I will ever read:)
Lots of love,
Melinda
Left by Melinda on January 18th, 2007