Working with the Deaf Blind in Dominican Republic

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Working with the Deaf Blind in Dominican Republic

By Jac | August 31, 2010

August 2010 saw the entrance of someone very special into my life: Grecia. She is a 39 year old woman who went deaf and blind 5 and 4 years ago, respectively. They believe her deafness is caused by the same disease that rendered her kidneys useless and left her on dialysis, although she also suffered a stroke and was in a coma for 4 days.

I met Grecia through Teresa, who has worked with others who have been affected by the whole kidney/deaf/blind combo. Since Grecia spent the first 35 years of her life living in a hearing world, she speaks Spanish and reads and writes. Her family has communicated with her for the last 5 years by writing on her leg with their finger. She has a husband and a son, but since becoming sick she has had to move in with her sister and her son has had to move in with family in another town. Her husband visits her everyday, and the two of them go visit their 8 year old boy, Anthony, in La Vega every weekend. It is really heartbreaking to see how her life has been turned upside down.

When we first met, she had a very hard time understanding our writing on her leg, plus the method is very laborious, so we started using magnetic letters that she could feel to teach her the manual alphabet. Here she is at the hospital, receiving dialysis and using her one free arm to feel the letters.

Once we received vocal recognition that she knew the letter, we would make the sign in her hand. It was tough to get her to understand that the shape we were making with our hands was representative of the letter, but eventually we got through. When she finally grasped what we were teaching her, she became a voracious learner and mastered the alphabet in just 3 weeks!

From there we would spell things into her hands and then teach her the signs. Her mind had atrophied greatly over the years, and she wasn’t used to communicating back and forth, so questions were a magnificent struggle to start with. Now, she gets everything with ease. Since she still thinks in Spanish I try to sign following a Spanish word order so that she can understand. When I bring Jessica with me, who is deaf and doesn’t know Spanish very well, she tries her best to follow Spanish, and it is super cute!

Despite her physical limitations Grecia has made it to the Kingdom Hall several times where she has been very warmly received.