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rcharlton

Moderator emeritus
Joined
Jun 20, 2005
Messages
641
Reason
PALS
Diagnosis
11/2005
Country
CA
State
Ontario
City
Toronto
It's getting to the point where sometimes I have to repeat myself 5 or 6 times to be understood. I'm starting to use Modeltalker but often this is not practical.

To make matters worse one of my caregivers is in denial about losing her hearing. She has a heart of gold but it can be so frustrating when I am trying to explain something to her over and over again only to have her stare at me blankly as if I was speaking a different language.

One of these incidents happened yesterday. My caregiver came downstairs with my bipap mask in two pieces advising me that she thought it was broken. It did not appear to be broken but I asked her just to put it on the table for my wife to look at later. Now I don't know if my caregiver couldn't understand me or if she was ignoring me, but she then proceeded to attempt to re-attach the bipap pieces. Now if my mask wasn't broken before, I could tell that it soon would be with how she handling it. So once again I repeated "Please just leave it on the table". She just kept on trying to mash the pieces together.

So I repeated over and over until I was almost screaming:
"Please just leave it on the table"
"Please just leave it on the table"
"Please just leave it on the table"
"Please just leave it on the table"
"PLEASE JUST LEAVE IT ON THE TABLE"

No response.

My 3 year old daughter was sitting next to me throughout all of this. She could see how aggravated I was getting. She placed her little hand on my shoulder and in a calming voice said:
"Shhhh.....Shhhh....It's OK dad...it's OK".

Then she placed her hand on my mouth to indicate that she would now be handling this matter, and with as much authority as her tiny little voice could muster tells my caregiver "PLEASE JUST LEAVE IT ON THE TABLE. Well that got my caregiver's attention.

My daughter has an uncanny ability to decipher my garbled speech - even more so than my wife. Just when I feel like I'm about to lose my mind with frustration when asking for something very basic, her little voice will pipe up with the correct translation to save me, just like the cavalry to the rescue. "Daddy needs water"
 
awww :) Out of the mouths of babes! Funny too, in that usually its the parents that can understand the baby best when she first starts to talk. So now she's reciprocating.
 
Great story, makes me smile...and cry
 
I understand your frustration,I spent 40 years in sales,my voice is 100% gone,keep it simple and get a few of the dry erase boards,if you can still raise your hand,it will work.Good luck
 
thats incredibly sweet.
 
Here she is!
 

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What a great story and hurray for your daughter! At the end of my speaking life the only one who could understand anything I said was my son, who at 20, still has good ears and has a lot of experience deciphering the mumbled lyrics in the music he listens to.

Reminds me of when my MIL visited and there was no way that she could understand anything that I said on my computer so the solution was to get a large computer monitor and connect it to my netbook so she could read what I was saying. Worked like a charm and saved a lot of aggravation for both of us.

Have to add since I just saw the pic, she is a real cutie!
 
She is a S W E E T P A T O O T I E ! what a doll
 
Poignant story. What a cute and empathetic/intuitive little sweetie pie.
Laurel
 
It's amazing sometimes how are kids end up being the main ones there for us. She obviously loves her daddy. I like thos story
 
She's a sweetie pie alright.

AL.
 
A warm story. Made me smile. You are lucky =)
 
I enjoy the story every time I read it. It is so special. How truly remarkable. How sweet and -- heartbreaking. But to cap it all, how remarkably sweet. She is adorable.
 
OK OK - you don't have to twist my arm-- I'll post more photos
 

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She is absolutely delightful. Thanks for putting up the photos.
Laurel
 
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