![]() ![]() Despite the inconveniences of not being able to lip read during COVID-19, I proudly wear my mask and fully expect others to wear theirs. I have even been in situations where my oldest son, at age 10, finds himself helping interpret what is being said as he is (luckily) a lot more patient with his mom than many others can be. Simple conversations may go over my head. By everyone wearing masks in public, I may not be able to lip read. It is such a simple and easy thing to do for others, especially our health care workers. Wearing a mask does more to protect others than it does to protect ourselves. My husband often says that wearing a mask is the ultimate act of altruism. So wearing a mask to slow the spread to give doctors and nurses a fighting chance to provide meaningful care to COVID-19 patients is a no brainer. My husband and a number of our extended family are physicians and many of them are on the frontlines caring for COVID-19 patients. As I had suspected over the years, my lip reading skills helped to mask (no pun intended) any shortcomings my incredibly limited hearing had. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I quickly realized that I do, indeed, have much, much less hearing than I had originally thought. I didn’t hold onto that internship position for long as I didn’t feel it was right to use my lip reading skills in that situation. I was even asked to lipread what the jury and prosecution said during a trial when I was a legal intern after college. ![]() ![]() Many a friend would ask me to lip read what other people were saying across the room which would lead to hilarious, if inaccurate, accountings. I would often be the one individual who would understand what people would say to one another during a loud dinner, a unique experience for someone who was more often than not left out socially. My lip reading skills have come in handy during loud, rowdy events over the years. So much of what I ‘hear’ and understand is actually a product of reading lips and facial expressions. I have often joked over the years that since I rely on lipreading so much, I have no real concept of how little hearing I actually have. Over the years, I learned to anticipate conversational topics depending on the person I would see, the location I would be in, and utilizing that knowledge with my limited hearing and lip reading. Chances are that conversation topics will vary from the workplace to family to social situations like crowded bars. It is like an ever-evolving puzzle, if you will. Lip reading, in conjunction with the little hearing I have amplified by hearing aids, and the ability to read facial expressions and body language, all combined with helping me decode what others said to me. By lip reading, I felt that I wasn’t out of the loop, by too much. Being in a classroom full of chattering, active kids, I learned quickly how to adapt and that was by lip reading. I was the first deaf student to be mainstreamed in that school district back in the 80s. I went to a deaf school as a kindergartner for all of three months and hated it, so my parents switched me over to the local public school system. I needed something to help me know what was going on around me other than relying on my hearing aids. I taught myself as a child how to lip read. ![]()
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