“When you go to the hospital,” says Kathleen Lord, a North College Hill woman who is visually impaired, “you are there because you're very sick.”

        In other words, you don't need other hassles to complicate the situation.

        Mrs. Lord was hospitalized for a week recently with bronchitis and other respiratory complications aggravated by diabetes. She wasn't there because of her vision, but that disability is part of who she is. The hospital staff, she says, could have made her life much easier and her stay less stressful if they had taken time (and common sense) to tell her things like what sorts of foods were arriving on her food tray or when and where objects (potential trip hazards for her) had been rearranged in her hospital room.

        I experienced the need for awareness training myself recently when I was sent by my physician to one of our area hospitals for routine tests. First, there was the receptionist who registered me, asking if I knew why I'd come. (No, I was just wandering by and thought I'd drop in for conversation.)

        Then, there was the supervisor who covertly cornered my daughter in the waiting room to ask her if I could walk on the treadmill.

        There are three things wrong with this scenario. First, why would my physician order a test I couldn't complete? Secondly, since I had walked into the facility unassisted and had no record or visible indication of having difficulty walking, why would she ask? And, finally, why would an otherwise intelligent person ask my daughter, rather than asking me, the patient?

        Of course I know the answers to all of these questions. “Otherwise intelligent” mortals sometimes come unraveled when they see a person who is blind, deaf, or quadriplegic. All the usual conventions — social, procedural, and otherwise — evaporate in the face of such confusion.

        Wearying though it may be, most people with disabilities become accustomed to the occasional brushes with ignorance and how disruptive those brushes can be. Deaf people know the sting of being ignored because another “feels uncomfortable” or can't figure out how to communicate visually; blind people are made to feel discounted when necessary information is available only in print; and wheelchair users encounter the occasional bizarre assumption that if you can't walk, you can't speak either.

        But Kathleen Lord is right: You go to a hospital only because you are sick or in need of specific medical treatment or testing. Those situations produce anxiety for everyone.

        If there is any particular category of public facility where disability awareness counts most, I'd place my vote in the hospital/clinic box. In my own recent encounter, the doctors and medical technicians happened to be wonderful; but having to prove my mental competency to a receptionist and soothe the ruffled feathers of the administrator to whom my daughter had responded with some amount of disdain, left a mark in memory alongside thosesavvy professionals.

        Medical facilities need to provide awareness training for all personnel who will be interacting with patients. Sometimes those patients will happen to have physical disabilities — and, frequently, those disabilities will have nothing to do with why those particular patients have come for care.

        Contact Deborah Kendrick by phone: 673-4474; fax: 321-6430; e-mail: dkkendrick@earthlink.net.

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