At the conclusion of the conference, we watched a short comical performance by Clay Anderson, Stephanie Gomes, and Robert Belshe, all in American Sign Language. The performance was tailored perfectly to the audience of deaf medical professionals.
Our favorite line was when Clay announced: "I'm 29 years old and have been an interpreter for 30 years." (He is hearing and his twin brother is deaf.) He goes on to say, "You see, back in the 1970s, all YOU doctors told each mother that reading out loud will help her fetus' brain development in utero. My brother's deaf, so I had to do this [closes his eyes as if still inside mother]--The...cat...in...the...hat."
Brother interrupts, "What's a cat?"
Clay: "uh...I don't know. Never seen one before. Never mind--just listen! [signs] Thing...One...and....Thing...Two." [Audience is laughing]
Next he did scenarios that illustrated how deaf communicate with physicians over time:
1) Deaf cave woman and cave doctor grunting and pointing to figure out what's wrong.
2) Early 1600's where a priest (interpreter) and a deaf nun (patient) go to the doctor becuase the nun has stomach pains. They struggle to communicate because of puritan rules of no looking and no touching, lest they sin grievously. ASL is largely visual, so this experience proves morally disastrous for them all.
3) 1960's, way before the ADA law passed, a teenager must go to the doctor and the only person who can help her communicate with the doctor is her father. Unfortunately, Dad finds out things about his daughter he wishes he hadn't.
4) Modern times where an interpreter is waiting in the lobby. The deaf client shows up. The doctor comes out. Turns out the doctor is deaf, too, and promptly dismisses the interpreter. The interpreter says, "Easy money! Wow."
Of course, we all laughed throughout the whole thing because it was comic relief for a long and stressful struggle for the deaf in general. Naturally, we appreciated the deaf doctor in the end and cheered.
Audrey Schellenbaum and me. Audrey is another R.N. that has been working for about 8 years. If she can do it, so can I.
Jaime and me with Barbara Jane Howard, a deaf pharmacist. She too is having trouble convincing the state of Alabama to give her a license. She was working already for many years doing just fine and then some hot-shot authority figure new to the state board of licensing in Alabama decided because she was deaf, she could not be issued a renewed license. So all of a sudden one day she was out of a job. Grrr! Sometimes people can be so ignorant! The rest of us rallied around her, knowing that it could happen to any one of us any day to have the misfortune of some panel member with a strong opinion about "dangerous deaf people." [Rabid growling.....hssss!.....]
Ann standing with group of doctors. Wendy, me, Corrine, and Nghi Lu. Corrine is a doctor from Germany and was signing with a German accent; she told us she might have to leave her family in Germany to come to the U.S. to work. She said, "The boss doctor is fighting for my rights to stay home. I talk to the big boss and he no like woman doctors."
Saturday was a joint conference combining two groups: Registry of Interpreters (particularly those who are interested in medical interpreting), and Association of Medical Professionals with Hearing Losses (AMPHL). This was really neat because it was informative about issues such as being an effective team with the deaf professional and the interpreter making their way through school or a career.
Jaime and I were on a panel of four people. Each of us shared an awkward situation from experience and we had an open discussion on how to resolve them, how to avoid it in the future, etc. All of us, including the audience, were engaged in it enough that we took up a whole hour.
We had a nice banquet at the end of conference. Jaime--clinical psychologist; on his left is a medical student, her interpreter, Robert and Stephanie (good friends of ours who came to perform in a comedy show later on), a pre-med student, an R.N. and then me (another R.N.) behind the camera. Most everyone in the room signed, which was neat because in no other situation in the world can we talk about body parts not working properly in sign language. :)
