Double Whammy

I have a great ophthalmologist. She’s very accommodating of my hearing loss. However, when I recently had cataract surgery, it was an eye-opener for both of us.

I usually have no problem communicating with my eye doctor. When I’m there for a visit I’m wearing my hearing aids and my glasses for lipreading and occasionally reading my automatic speech-to-text app on my phone to confirm what was said.

As we were discussing my cataract surgery, I started to realize just how isolated I’d be. I wasn’t going to be able to wear my hearing aids or glasses, and even if I could have my phone, I couldn’t read the auto-captions without my glasses. Oh, and the medical folks would all be masked. Operating rooms can also be noisy places so even if people spoke really loudly to me, I probably wouldn’t be able to understand them.

To tell the truth, I was feeling a bit panicky and out of control the more I thought about these things. This wasn’t on my doctor’s radar at all. She said we communicated so well in her office that it just didn’t occur to her that communicating in the OR would be any different.