First Thoughts
She remembered I had hearing loss! She didn’t even put the mask on at all. In the first half, it hung off her ear like on par with some of huge earrings that were popular in the 80s. In the second half, she didn’t even have it on. She made a mention before I flipped over that she wears them for the benefit of others. As with so many challenges to DHH-folk, she started doing that during the pandemic. She mentioned that she thought about wearing the face shield she has, that way I could see her lips. I thanked her for not doing so. While visible, the face shield still muffles the sound.
Kidneys are connected to hearing! Does this mean my kidney function is bad? I forgot to ask her that.
There were so many more OH! moments. I had a cascade of tingles down my shin and across the top of my right foot when I was on my back and I had another down my calf and across my heel and bottom of my foot when I was on my tummy. There were plenty of muscle twitching on my traps, my neck, and my shoulders. I was much tighter this time! I also felt a dull throbbing on my right arm when I was meditating after she left me playing the role of pin cushion on my back.
Blind Acupuncturists
In Japan there is an organization made up of blind acupuncturists! I love it when I get something new to research.
Sometime near the end of the 17th, Waichi Sugiyama came up with a way to make acupuncture less painful. In so doing, he set Japanese acupuncture apart from Chinese acupuncture. And, as you may have guessed from how this section started, he was blind. Thus Toyo Hari was born.
When you think about it, eyesight isn’t all that important with acupuncture. No, really! The knots of muscles and the dams of energy are more felt than seen. And just as my hearing loss leaves my auditory cortex with less to do, a blind person’s visual cortex has less to do for a blind person. So people like Waichi Sugiyam use their visual cortex to process touch, just like my auditory cortex moonlights as a visual processor.
Moving on from science to legend, Waichi’s innovation went down the tubes. Literally. He’s credited with using a tube to guide the needle insertion, making it not just more accurately inserted but less painfully done. And as with any legend worth its bamboo, there’s an apocryphal origin tale:
Waichi stayed at the [Benton, the only good luck goddess] shrine, fasting and praying in the cave for three weeks. At the story goes, when he came out of the cave after the fast, he stumbled over a stone (see Figure 1). As he fell to the ground, a pine-tree needle stuck deep into his leg. Cursing, he picked it up, and, as he did, he realized that it was sticking out from a reed of bamboo. Inspiration struck: for the acupuncturists, it is a critically important to stick the needle straight down and attain the proper depth: this pine needle in its bamboo cradle had done just that. Upon his return, he began using a small pipe to help guide the acupuncture needle vertically to pierce the patient’s skin. That bamboo reed became the basis for a device known as a kudabari¾ a needle insertion guide tube that is now standard equipment for both blind and sighted acupuncturists worldwide.
Source: http://www.itmonline.org/arts/japacu.htmAlso from the above source: he founded Shinji Koushujo, Edo’s first organized school for the blind. This was, perhaps, his most important contribution to acupuncture because of the Meiji Restoration. In the late 1800s Japan started to move away from the perceived backwardness of traditional Chinese medicine in favor of Western medicine. To that end, the practice of acupuncture was forbidden. Forbidden, that is, for all but blind practitioners. As with today, the job prospects for people with disabilities is limited. Acupuncture was one of the few jobs available to blind Japanese men and women. So they were allowed to continue to practice. Which allowed acupuncture to survive to today.
In addition to the source quoted above, I got information from this article: https://acupuncturetoday.com/article/31591-in-the-land-of-the-blind
and this book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0747MWGG3/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
Here endeth the lesson. Let’s turn back to my visit.
Back-and-Forth
With the possible exception of Chris, my audiologist, Yoko is the best communicator among the healthcare professionals I see.
Yoko is as thoughtful as she is friendly. As she worked her way down my body, if she had something more involved than “are you ok” or “this spot is tight, you might feel this”, she would walk back up to my head and take up a position where I could read her lips. And when it came time for me to make like a flapjack and flip over, we have a quick discussion.
As you may remember, I found it harder hear here laying on my stomach. So we talked about it. She said we could try with me lying on my side. I asked her if it’d be less effective that way. She said yes, it’s tough to do it bilateral work if I’m laying on one of my laterals. So, I decided to stick with the the tummy. I’m grateful for her willingness to talk about it and give me honest answers to my question.
When I was on my tummy, she put a needle in my neck and brushed my ear a couple of times. I didn’t think anything of it. She did. She apologized for hitting my ear.
She asked if I was concerned with how much DEI is being targeted. At first, I thought she was talking about immigrants or even women. Then I realized she was talking about the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community. I was floored. (Not literally, I was lying on a table..) Julie is much more aware of the potential harm the current administration poses than I am. But when Yoko asked, I got to thinking about what Julie has said and realized my community may very well be at risk. I told Yoko that the HLAA has worked with congress to pass legislation about captions requirements in airports. I don’t see the current administration working with the HLAA.
Tech Help
MAKE SURE SHE’S OK WITH ME OUTING HER MOM.
I did some tech help. I can’t even say this is the oddest place I’ve ever done tech help. A few years ago, I was sitting in the office of a garage waiting for my car to be inspected. A woman kept staring at me. Since my peripheral vision is excellent, I looked up and smiled politely before going back to my book. But she interrupted me and asked if I worked at the Wilmington Memorial Library. I then talked about the digitization service we had. She’s been making use of that ever since.
But back to tech help, pointy-needle edition
She mentioned her mother is having trouble hearing on the phone. I told her it’s only a matter of time for most people. We live in such a noisy world that decades-worth of exposure takes it’s toll on us all. Empathy taken care of, I kicked into my advice-giving gear.
I mentioned InnoCaption and Nagish for smartphones and Captel for the landline. Then when I started to write this post, I realized there may be a hole in my plan. One big enough to ride a Moose through; are the apps multilingual. So I did some research. Turns out, the apps do
Here’s how to change the InnoCaption language: https://help.innocaption.com/en/articles/9236747-is-captioning-available-in-languages-other-than-english
Here’s how to change the Nagish language:
https://help.nagish.com/en/articles/8038785-how-to-change-the-language-of-my-calls
Though, Nagish supports fewer languages than InnoCaption: https://help.nagish.com/en/articles/7956544-which-languages-does-nagish-support
That was great to learn! But the CapTel landline only supports English and Spanish: https://www.captel.com/knowledgebase/captel-2400i-turn-on-ability-to-switch-languages-during-a-call/
With there being ever fewer folks with landlines, I’m not surprised CapTel is limited. It takes time to develop an offering in another language. And time, as they say, is money.
I’m given homework,
what a lucky guy I am!
Learning breeds wisdom.
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