The diary of a deaf child

I am a day old in my mother’s womb today. Just like full stop at the end of this sentence. My mother doesn’t know about me. A month later she started feeling sick. My father urged her to go for a pregnancy test lo and behold, she is one month pregnant. She is happy about the news and rushed home to tell papa. They are newly married, so I was to be the first from my mother’s womb. Days passed and months passed and the “D” day came. Mother had prolonged labor and as little as I was, I pitied mama. Prayers came from far and wide and than I came out with a starling cry.

       Mama gave a sigh of relief. I was finally born. I am a baby boy. Father was happy and called neighbors’, friends and relatives to break the news. I fed on my mother’s breast, so I grew fast. At my six month of age, I was not babbling and I was not responding to noise around me. Mama was so worried and took me to hospital. The doctor examined day after day; little did they know that I was in a silent world. A world of the deaf. A world of signs. A word of no speech. At age three, it was becoming more glaring that I was to be deaf. A day came when my mother took me to an audiologist, an expert for ear, then came the announcement. “Your son is deaf, find him a special school” my poor mum was abruptly muted by what she just heard from the doctor. What a big blow to mama and papa. But don’t worry mama and papa. I shall make it life. How would they know? Disappointment sets in, confusion, regrets and what have you. lots of advice and counter advice crept in and I watched in amazement. How do I help them know that they have to accept the condition and life goes on and I will be what I will be? No way to tell them so I watched as the scene unfolds. From one church to another and to different hospitals and experts, they went looking for how my ear will be would be unstopped and all to no avail. I will watch mama cry many times but how do I comfort her and tell her that it will be better? For my speech is not there. How do I tell them to put me to a special school early enough so that I pursue my career? I want to be a doctor. My mother put me in a private school beside our house. I sat and watched them do things I never understood. I prayed to God to open their hearts, then a neighbor walked up to mama when I was seven and told mama about my school. A school where I will join my kind of world.  Mama took me there and I saw my people. I saw my language, I saw my future as mother watched me laugh and chant in amazement. Terms came and passed and I finished my primary and secondary school in flying colors. I taught mama sign language so she could communicate with me. Papa asked me in writing what would I study in the university? I replied “medicine and surgery”. I got a scholarship abroad and there I saw that there is ability in disability. Today, I am a medical doctor and happily married.

So mama is there a difference?

                            The end