Deaf Like Me

Ok, so my mom asked me to post one of my papers. This one I had to write for Bio and Culture of Deafness about the book Deaf Like Me. I don't think its the best thing I've ever written, but I got it back yesterday with an A and the following comments from the professor, "Hillary, this is an excellent paper. You have a fluid, mature writing style and you communicate your ideas and thoughts very well. The summary is clear; the description of sensorineural hearing loss is easy to read and understand; and your reaction very frank and honest. Well done. "

Without further ado, please enjoy my paper.

BISC 7A Paper #1
Summary of Deaf like Me
Louise and Thomas Spradley are a fairly average American couple. They are young, married, and have one child, Bruce, and they of course love him deeply. One summer, Bruce becomes ill with German measles, or rubella. Just a few days before this diagnosis, Louise discovered that she was pregnant. The doctor tells her that contracting rubella while pregnant could lead to various congenital defects in the newborn. The indefinite quality of this warning serves as the material for Louise and Thomas’s nightmares for the next nine months.
When Lynn Spradley is finally born, she appears to be a perfectly normal and healthy child. She has no physical deformities, nor any noticeable mental deficiencies. Louise and Thomas are hesitantly relieved. Thomas admits in the book to having still lingering fears for months to come. However Lynn continues to grow and develop in a perfectly healthy manner. Gradually, her parents stop living in fear. They relax; secure in the love of their newest child.
Around the time Lynn reaches the age of six months, she and her family attend a Fourth of July celebration. As is typical of these events, there were fireworks. Characteristic of a child her age, Lynn fell asleep before the festivities started. When the fireworks started exploding, Thomas expected Lynn to wake. She did not. Nor did she start at all in reaction to the thunderous sounds. She slept soundly on. This was the first time Thomas and Louise suspected their daughter might be deaf.
After a barrage of tests and the passage of close to two years, it was determined that Lynn had a profound hearing loss. The next years were spent attempting to train Lynn’s residual hearing though use of a hearing aid. Another component to this approach was the efforts spent trying to get Lynn to talk. Louise and Thomas were led to believe that the only way Lynn could be a functioning part of society was if she was able to talk and lip read.
Years passed. Lynn’s residual hearing was next to useless in helping her to communicate. She was able to lip read many words, but not nearly enough. And she was able to articulate only a handful. She was completely isolated from everything and everyone because she had no way to communicate. This led to her constant frustration, which in turn forced her parents into dealing with her tantrums. The situation seemed next to hopeless.
Then Thomas met a group of deaf adults. These people were able to communicate with one another and with select hearing people. These adults were fluent in American Sign Language. Through ASL, deaf people were able to converse just as easily as hearing people. While the Spradleys had been led to believe since the diagnosis of Lynn’s hearing loss that learning to sign would isolate her; the opposite was true. When Louise and Thomas taught Lynn to sign and learned to sign themselves, a whole new world was opened up to her. Now she could clearly communicate what she wanted. No longer did she have to be frustrated by her own silence and the silence of those around her. By learning sign language, Lynn was given a way to tell the world what she wanted. American Sign Language gave Lynn a voice, and a life of her own.

Biological Explanation of Lynn Spradley’s Deafness
Lynn Spradley was diagnosed at 18 months with a profound sensorineural hearing loss. While her parents suspected that she might be deaf or hearing impaired at an earlier age, no definite diagnosis could be reached before Lynn was old enough to respond effectively to tests. Testing is typically done at around age two. Lynn’s early test age was no doubt due to the persistence of her parents. They wanted to know the exact details of their daughter’s hearing loss so they could learn what to do about it.
Unfortunately, there is typically very little that can be done about a hearing loss as serious as Lynn’s. By definition, a profound loss means that the individual has lost 90 or more decibels of hearing. This kind of deafness renders the person almost completely without the ability to process sound. Only the lowest noises register, even with the use of a hearing aid. A profound hearing loss is the most intense. The other classifications are mild, moderate, and severe. They are fairly self explanatory when viewed in context.
The sensorineural component to Lynn’s loss is rather complicated. Sensorineural is an inner ear hearing loss. The damage is found in the cochlea, a spiral-shaped organ in the deepest recesses of the human ear. The cochlea is filled with fluid that responds to sounds that come from the middle and outer ear. The movement of said fluid forces the numerous tiny hair cells into motion. These hair cells are essential for the hearing process. People with sensorineural hearing losses have somehow obtained damage to the hair cells. Thus, any sound that is received is distorted. This makes speech next to impossible, even with the help of a hearing aid.
Various things can cause damage to the hair cells. Loud noises (the bass at a rock concert, the sound of a gunshot, etc) can cause the hairs to fall limp. An illness can have the same effect. The illness can be contracted by the individual postpartum, or, as in Lynn’s case, while the child is in the womb. Louise Spradley, Lynn’s mother, had rubella while she was pregnant. This led to Lynn’s condition.
The combination of profound and sensorineural makes a hearing loss that is very difficult to improve upon. The profound component means that Lynn can hear only certain loud, low sounds to begin with. The sensorineural aspect garbles those sounds. The conclusion, even if a hearing aid can train Lynn’s residual hearing enough to enable her to discern her parents’ voices, she will not be able to understand what they are saying to her.
The remedies for a hearing loss like Lynn’s are, as previously stated, difficult to come by. Hearing aids can only do so much. There is new research into cochlear implants, but the controversy surrounding the issue is too great for the moment. As of right now, the main ‘cure’ for a child like Lynn is to teach her to lip read and to sign. Those things gave her the ability to communicate with the world around her.


Reaction to Deaf like Me
I was not planning on enjoying this book. I assumed it would be another one of those books assigned for class that would be interesting, but not especially intriguing. I was wrong. Plain and simple. From the first page, Deaf like Me had me enthralled. I waited anxiously with Louise and Thomas during the nine months of pregnancy. I was happy, but still nervous when Lynn was born physically normal. I, as the reader of a book about a deaf child, had the advantage of knowing what was coming. It didn’t help. I was still devastated when it was revealed how serious Lynn’s hearing loss was.
I was amazed by the processes involved in testing for hearing loss. I did not know, for example, that every deaf individual has some level of hearing. I assumed that deaf meant deaf. The levels of hearing impairment are much more varied and distinct than I had previously thought. I was impressed by the Spradleys’ determination to discern the exact details of Lynn’s impairment. I feel like most parents would have given up at ‘deaf’. Louise and Thomas stayed dedicated to Lynn through the entire process. Yet they also did not neglect their other child. They were as attentive to Lynn as they needed to be, and they were still loving parents to Bruce.
Throughout the book, I was completely drawn in. The long and seemingly futile attempts to teach Lynn to lip read and to speak were fascinatingly heartbreaking. I understood the thought process behind teaching Lynn to communicate through speech and was on board with the pure oral approach, I just gradually came to understand how difficult a task that was. I did not realize how much effort had to go into teaching a child what slight variations in lip movement corresponded to what object. Lynn was lucky to have parents who were so patient. It is truly amazing the amount of hard work they put into helping her. They literally had to rearrange their lives every time Lynn graduated from a lower level school. Thomas and Louise were constantly researching the latest innovations surrounding hearing losses so that they could provide Lynn with the most effective level of care. As learners and teachers, they were open to anything and everything that could help Lynn assimilate into a society that could be forever foreign to her.
The length of time devoted to the pure oral approach was disheartening, especially once it was revealed how few children are actually successful. I at first thought the idea made sense. Given how afraid our society is of people who appear obviously different, it was completely plausible that Lynn’s only chance of assimilating was to learn how to blend in. However, as the years passed and Lynn’s language did not improve, I, like the Spradleys, began to wonder if she would ever talk. True stories occasionally do not have the happy, inspirational endings found in fiction.
Then Louise and Thomas met the deaf couple. I have to say, after pages and pages of learning how awful sign language was, I was not overly excited for Lynn to resort to gestures. That was one thing I disliked about the book, how prejudiced it tried to make me against deaf signers. American Sign Language is not a primitive form of communication. It is a unique language that enables people who were for so long isolated to be able to interact. When Lynn first signed “I love you” to her parents, I was choking up. For so long their dream had been to hear her voice. Really, all they wanted was to hear her thoughts.
Signing opened up the world for Lynn. I thought it was so amazing that she picked up the signs so fast. It took years to teach her to say a few words. Yet teaching her sign language took weeks if that. She learned so much more quickly than her parents. I guess this is just a testament to how truly flexible a young mind is. With this new ability to actually communicate what she wants from people around her, Lynn is able to lead a normal life. Thomas’s realization that giving in to sign language was not forever barring Lynn from ‘normalcy’ was a fundamental turning point in her life and in the message of the book. Normal is a fluid concept. Normal should not be defined as being exactly like everyone else; it should instead be however a person is most comfortable and able to make their voice heard.