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Incommunicado
North Miami Beach, FL May 20, 2002
A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.
INCOMMUNICADO
It is rare, perhaps, that we "normal" people find ourselves
unseeing and unhearing. Yet it happens. For a couple of days following an
operation on my eyelids (they drooped so much that my vision was obscured) I
had to lie abed and have ice applied continuously. I could not see but I
could hear with the aid of loudspeakers near my head. These brought the
action on the screen close to me so I could follow what was happening. This
was not a grave thing because my vision shut down was voluntary and
temporary. Even so I was not totally incommunicado. I think you know my
hearing is so impaired that I cannot hear the doorbell ring in either of the
bedrooms.
Carol is miffed that I could but chose not to listen to the many
classical music CD's as well as stories on tapes in our collection. I found
that a movie on TV was not the best thing for me in this condition lying in
bed with my eyes covered. I had a remote control so I could change stations
and switch them around to find one where I could hear talk shows rather than
need to see to make sense of them. I decided that, despite the inferiority
of the few such stations, it would be best to listen to "talking heads".
Thus I could spend my time attending to world and national affairs to
distract my attention from the discomfort of surgery. My discovery that I
could not do things for myself was devastating.
For a time I found myself cut off from simple things and I faced
the quandary the handicapped find themselves in. Remembering the placement
of numbers on the remote so I could operate it was difficult. We are so
used to looking at what we do and are assisted by signs and plainly marked
tools we see so that we need not memorize the things we commonly use. My
fingers, usually assisted by vision, go directly to the buttons I need but
unseeing I cannot do this. I found that I had to cheat and peek under the
ice and that I had to ask Carol to feed me and medicate my incisions.
Being incommunicado is for some just an irritating interlude. For
others it is a permanent condition. It takes a great deal of paying
attention to little things that others take for granted.
Carol's Evaluation: 9.5 out of 10
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