General Chat

At the carer's tea yesterday it was read out that Fred had received his medal in the welcoming speech and that , if anybody was interested, they should come to the table and I would tell them about it.

Well,no.

If they came to the table, Fred could tell them about it.
I wasn't there, he had the empirical stuff, not me. It might take him a bit of time to get the words together but, if they were interested, they would wait.

One man who was a navy veteran was particularly interested but said he was worried about stressing Fred too much.

He is not ill, he has all his faculties but his speech is difficult. Please, please, please engage with him. It is his to tell, but slowly.

Where his face is not very mobile now, one side was almost completely immobile when he came home from hospital, and where he has never liked to give too much away, his expression doesn't tell you much so people think he is unaware of what is going on.

It would seem that this is why people don't come up and talk to him as much as they could at the village lunch. Somebody asked me if I thought he was aware of what was going on at his medal presentation. Was he ever!!!

Please be patient with the disabled but please don't patronize them. Most are inconvenienced not idiots.

WHAT IS BAD IS WHEN IM IN THE WHEELCHAIR HOW MANY PEOPLE
ASK MY OH HOW AM I

I M THE ONE TO ANSWER THAT BUT THEY ASK HIM
AND HOW THE HELL DOSE HE KNOW

This alas is called the "Does he take sugar?" behaviour

why oh why do people continue to do it!!! it is so demeaning - it's bad enough that those who are unfortunate enough to be wheelchair-bound are on a lower level than the person talking to them - but to talk over them as if they were not there is just plain rude

That was another thing. I made people sit on a chair to talk to him. They would insist on leaning over him, making him look at them at a strange angle.

People used to do it to my mum, talk to me over her head,.Nothing wrong with her mind at all and her speech was ok at that point, it used to annoy her greatly.

OH stumbles with his words .he will think of something to say and starts and its gone. People don't know how to react . They look puzzled or embarrassed . Why ? Or they will say I don't understand you In an impatient way I get a bit annoyed with that and will say give him a chance !

I try to encourage him to find his words by going around it in another way with prompts and clues for what he wants and we often get there .

Please have patience with people who have problems .

At home I go through all sorts of ways to work out what Fred is saying. He gets impatient with me, there's logical!

I tell him that he needs to remember that I am giving enough importance to what he is saying to decipher it so not to blame me because I can't speak fluent gibberish.

We do the series of questions bit about whether he wants to eat it and what colour it is. He still wants railway bridges for his dinner.

lol Sharron that made me giggle.

OH too comes out with some funnies ,we laugh together at some of em .

I don't suppose you know how to cook Aviemore do you Shirley? That is what he wanted for his lunch once.

He had to have cheese on toast, I know how to make that!

I know what you mean.

I have friends who are deaf, and am amazed at the stupidity of people who think if they YELL at the deaf people, that will help.

They do another stupid thing......... go to the other side of the room, and talk about them........... not realising that most deaf people can lip read.

I used to work for a man who had a severely cleft palate. He was manager and a bit of an officious little git so the young workers would laugh about him.

He thought he could score off me by laughing at me for being fat until I told him very loudly that, as I chose not to mock him I would be grateful if he did the same for me!

Anyway, after this he was civil to me but I could not always understand what he said so I asked him to spell it if I couldn't make the word out. Don't know if it was the first time somebody had bothered to make out his whole conversation but I certainly had a few jammy jobs out of it, where I had to work alongside him.

Of course they know you can't understand them, why make out you can? I would always rather be practical than patronizing!

Puts me in mind of an incident related by a blind person with a guide dog - finding themselves in unfamiliar territory asked a passerby for directions.

The passerby hunkered down and gave the directions to the DOG :-D