Smart Ass Cripple: Going to the Doctor While Deaf

If you’re self-quarantining in an attempt to avoid getting sick and dying from COVID-19 and, coincidentally, you happen to be deaf, well, look on the bright side: The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) has put together a project to help you pass away the time.

You’ll probably need a sign language interpreter present. But that might not be that easy to do, what with the rules banning visitors that many hospitals have put in place during the pandemic.

The NAD website lists a whole bunch of things deaf people should do to be prepared in case their self-quarantine is unsuccessful and they have to go to the hospital anyway. Because if you’re deaf and you have to communicate with hospital staff during a pandemic like this, that’s when the nightmare really begins. It’s imperative to live by the Boy Scout motto and “be prepared.”

If you’re not deaf and you have to go to the hospital, what do you have to remember to take with you? A toothbrush maybe? But if you’re deaf, as the NAD points out, everybody at the hospital will be wearing masks. Now I know that there’s this enduring, Hollywood-fueled myth that all deaf people can read everyone’s lips verbatim. But even if that were remotely true, what about when the speaker wears a mask? Or, as the NAD points out, what if the doctor is addressing you from behind or from the other side of a screen to avoid coming in contact with your tainted droplets?

In that case, you’ll probably need a sign language interpreter present. But that might not be that easy to do, what with the rules banning visitors that many hospitals have put in place during the pandemic.

Disability Rights Connecticut filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services against the state of Connecticut for “failing to ensure that persons with disabilities who are hospitalized receive reasonable accommodations from hospitals during the COVID-19 public health emergency.”  The complaint says, “Specifically, persons with disabilities are not being permitted necessary exceptions to strict ‘no visitor’ policies adopted by hospitals due to the pandemic.”

The complaint tells the story of a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Maria, who is hard of hearing and has limited vision. In April, she went to the emergency room of a New Haven hospital seeking treatment for mental health symptoms. She asked for a sign language interpreter, since that is her preferred method of communication, but instead she was provided with an interpreter via video. Well, that didn’t work out because Maria couldn’t see the screen clearly, and the feed kept freezing up anyway. She left after three hours and never was provided with an interpreter because the hospital would not allow one onsite due to visitor restrictions.

So the NAD lists a bunch of speech-to-text apps that deaf people should download to their smartphones in case they go to the hospital and have to communicate with masked, non-deaf people and no interpreter is present. The NAD also recommends testing the apps at home to make sure they work.

For those who don’t have smartphones, the NAD can only suggest that they be prepared to communicate the old-fashioned way by bringing a pad of paper and writing implements.

The NAD says every deaf person should put together an “emergency bag” to take to the hospital, which should include such things as a pad of paper and writing implements, a cellular hotspot in case the hospital WiFi isn’t working, an extension cord in case your bed isn’t close to an outlet, tablets or laptops, and chargers for these devices.

Deaf people can while away many quarantine hours doing all this stuff to increase the odds that they won’t die if they get sick. And if they still find themselves with idle time on their hands, they can spend it praying hard that they’ll never have to put any of these preparations to the test.