One of my professers made this challenge for us students. We had to spend three hours with some form of speech loss. Mine just happened to turn out to be more than four days long. The following journal is over a four-day period where I, the client, had lost my voice completely due to a severe head and sinus cold. This is what I experienced and how frustrated I felt during this process.
Through all of my classes, I have been forced to remain silent because by the time I can write out an answer to a question or write a question, the teacher has already moved on. I have no vocal ability to produce any sound, so I must either snap, clap or make a sound with my body to get anyone’s attention. I have developed a system with a few close friends in my classes, and they are reading my notes and passing on my information. Although I am being able to communicate in unique ways, I am still very frustrated. I am limited to short responses, and I am not able to have any in-depth conversations with anyone.
My favorite class has become band because thankfully, I do not need a voice to be heard. I have my bass clarinet to be able to express my feelings by playing. I have felt like I have been contained to expression, and for me, that is a hard time to bear through. I look forward to this hour where, for once, the spoken word isn’t the most important. Instead, my ability and talent are doing the “talking” for me.
This weekend, I have contained my life to my room because there is no way for me to communicate with anyone in person. I have developed a system of texting my roommate when she asks a question. Texting has been the only communication that seems to work fast and effective enough for me. This frustrates me even more because by not being able to speak, it is hard to get her attention.
I think the absolute worst was the fact that I wanted to order food, and I couldn’t communicate out loud and the waiter gave me strange glances. I ended up having a huge mistake in the order that was taken and then ended up with the wrong food that was more of a hassle to fix than it was worth.
In conclusion, this time I spent completely mute was a weird experience. I know a lot of sign language, but I found only one of my friends was able to actually read my signs, so it was a great help but still limited me to only speaking to one person. I can see how to use different forms of communication for clients that deal with speech loss. Also, this made me want to refine my sign language skills even more for any future circumstances.
