My Mum
My mother has had a sensorineural hearing loss since early childhood. This progressed to profound deafness by the time she reached her teenage years. Two of her four siblings were deaf from birth and other members of our family also have hearing loss, including my sister's seven year old daughter. Needless to say, deafness and hearing loss have always been a part of my life. This is a story about my mother.
Published in Better Hearing September 2004
mailto: gayjen@tpg.com.auMum taught me to lipread as a child. We'd have great fun lipreading to each other while no-one else had a clue what we were saying. Cheekily, we still do it to this day, to the constant frustration of my partner! I have many other memories such as this one: my deaf Aunt took my sister and I so see 'The Man from Snowy River.' We secured ourselves some terrific seats towards the back of the cinema. During a deathly quiet scene, my Aunt turned to us and said in an excruciatingly loud voice. "Are you enjoying the film?", to which what seemed like a never ending sea of movie goes turned to stare and exclaimed, "Shhhhh"?
While my sister and I were at primary school, Mum would volunteer hours of her time each day to the school, assisting the teachers with classes and admin and of course giving talks on hearing awareness. The kids thought she was wonderful - she let them hold her hearing aids! (Yes, she is courageous!)
At 10 years of age, I took a school excursion to the Law Courts. It was there that I first saw a court reporter using a shorthand machine. I was mesmerised by the ease at which she moved her fingers across the keys. My life was about to change.
That afternoon I came bursting through the front door, declaring to my parents that I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a shorthand reporter!
Little did I know, as I witnessed the day-to-day difficulties that my mother experienced, that one day my chosen career would help her and others with hearing loss so much.
I studied Court and Parliamentary Reporting at the Queensland University of Technology. The course was taught I would wake up most days at 4.30am (not unusual given Brisbane's heat) and practise for hours on my shorthand machine before heading off to lectures. My mother too would wake up early, offering me regular cups of tea and words of encouragement. I wouldn't have made it through the course were it not for her unfailing support.
Once I graduated, I worked as a Federal Hansard reporter. Six years later I moved to Sydney and started 'realtime' reporting, working on the New South Wales Police Royal Commission for a time, as well as other arbitrations and tribunals. Then stenocaptioning began in Australia and I was thrilled that my skills could benefit others in such a way.
The travel bug soon bit. I moved to London for three years, working in courts and tribunals all over Europe and even in Bermuda!
Now Mum's life was about to change
While I was away, my sister gave birth to her second child. A source of constant heartache to my mother was that she was unable to hear her grandchildren. After much consideration, she took the decision to have a cochlear implant. Now Mum's life was about to change.
After the operation, my mother lived in silence for several weeks until the 'switch-on', at which point we would know whether the operation had been successful.
Switch-on day came. Result: success!
The next few months brought much joy as she would constantly ask. "What's that noise?" Everything was new and exciting to her. She heard the crackling of a plastic bag for the first time. When she flushed the toilet, she came funning out exclaiming, "It sounds like Niagara Falls!"
I can't say for sure how Mum feels about birds, though. Shortly after her operation her pet lorikeet escaped from its cage, brushing past her ear while in flight and inadvertently catching the $10,000 Cochlear processor in its claw. As my mother watched in horror, in slow motion the bird made its way to a nearby tree, at which point the processor loosened from its grip, plummeted back to earth, narrowly missing a large puddle of muddy water. It's a true story! If the worst had happened, imagine trying to explain that to the insurance company!
My mother volunteers much of her time to Deaf and hearing impaired organisations and is a member of both local and national groups. She is a great support many hearing impaired people in the community.
Mum loves a challenge, she's a computer whiz and she's constantly learning new things. I'm very proud of her. She ranked in the top five finishers at the Australian Lipreading championships in 2002 and is much better than I could ever hope to be! Click here to read about her success.
She's the bookkeeper for Brain Injury Australia, not to mention our own company and she's currently undertaking a four-month business management course, which I CART for her as often as I can.
It's an incredible gift to be able to share such experiences with her. She truly is an inspiration.
NARI JENNINGS
Nari Jennings is a director of The Captioning Studio, which offers CART, TV broadcast captioning and webcast captioning services, as well as open and closed captioning of videos and DVDs, and will be providing CART at the Better Hearing Australia Annual conference in Hobart this year.
nari.jennings@thecaptioningstudio.com www.thecaptioningstudio.com