Originally Posted by newbaby:
“So, in amongst this week's weirdness, there is a crisis: not any old crisis but a CRISIS. But it's not a CRISIS about which she can speak. Are we meant to be on tenterhooks about this CRISIS? Imagining what terrible horror has befallen the person who manages to include a non-working hoover, obscure lawn mower for which parts are unavailable in a list of life's upsets which mentions, en passant, the death of her mother.
(And, in LJ's piece in the main body of the MonS, she says she has four hearing dogs trained to alert her if the fire alarm goes off. Sorry: I just do not believe that the unruly pack of assorted hounds are in any shape or form "hearing dogs" in the proper sense. I'm certain they would bark if the fire alarm went off, but not because they are trained to do so. Her remarks do a great disservice to the Hearing Dogs charity, which works in the same way as Guide Dogs for the Blind: extensive and specialist training from what I suppose one calls puppyhood.)”
BIB - Indeed they do. I posted something about this a few pages back, but a true 'hearing dog' trained by the charity costs a lot of money to train. In addition, a fully-trained 'hearing dog' will usually wear an outer 'odg vest' with clear wording which shows it's working when out and about with its owner (just as most guide dogs have wording on their hi-vis dog vests). Certainly the one hearing dog Jersey's Deaf Adult/Earsay charities have raised money to fund cost a lot of money, and it wears its vest all the time when out with her owner.
That is a 'hearing dog', Liz, not just a family pet who you have decided to tell people is one!
Originally Posted by Trudi Monk:
“There is also a huge way to go from severely deaf to profoundly deaf. Severely deaf is a loss of decibels at 70% or more and profoundly deaf is a DBL of 95% or more.”
One of my best friends is profoundly Deaf (and has been from birth, although she lip reads very well, talks relatively clearly, and uses BSL - which I'm also learning so we can communicate without all the effort being my friend's). I've had to accompany her to some of her audiology test recently, so I've got used to the terminology, and what you say is very true - the degree of deafness varies greatly withing 'severe', before you reach 'profound' as a diagnosis. Profoundly Deaf people often have balance issues too which can affect their ability to function normally for days at a time, although of course everyone is different, and some suffer much less than others.
Originally Posted by
puffin1962:
“LJ's disability seems to be an unusual type 
-she has great difficulty in hearing in certain circumstances - yet seems not to need special equipment and to be able to use a landline/i-phone even (dare I say it Blackberry) quite normally when it comes to calling banks, tax offices, utility companies to berate them on her service
- she has great difficulty in hearing church services and certain meetings "because she is deaf" yet manages to appear on Big brother, attend plays, concerts, fashion show mingles and give talks with Q&As with seemingly much less difficulty
- she appears not to be registered as disabled as she makes no mention of all the benefits/help/specialist equipment, mobility cars, free travel - UNLESS she wants to take her dog into a restaurant or park her car in a disabled space (but has no badge)
She seems to have some level of hearing loss - yet one that does not really seem to impair her functionality too much until something annoys her
and I write as someone with a very painful physical disability who also gets little help and sometimes can't get to work as people like LJ have clogged up the disabled parking so that no wheelchair/wheeled walker can get alongside the car”
BIB - That much is true, but she's not Deaf with a big 'D', just as someone with moderately severe to severe vision issues isn't Blind with a big 'B'. Again, a few pages back, I posted a quote from the forward of a book written by the hearing daughter of two profoundly Deaf parents whose comparison between sight/hearing loss and Deafness/Blindess I thought was apposite in Liz's case. There is a reason why the dDeaf (almost always expressed the small 'd', then big 'D' together in the community) and HOH (hard of hearing) communities make these distinctions, and Liz is riding rough-shod (no pun intended!) over that and making up her own rules about her 'disability'.