Experiences of life, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
The doctor who became a grandmother, Tsai, is the very first doctor who used sign language in her office in the Hualien-Taidong areas, thirty years ago, under the expectations of a deaf-mute patient, it’d helped her, sown the seeds of a deaf clinic in the distant regions; every week she’d gone to and fro, and enjoyed making the trips, “for the sake of my thirty-year-old dreams.”
Over thirty years ago, when Tsai just graduated from the medical school, she’d carried the dreams of heading off to the distant areas to treat the patients, as she’d worked as a doctor at MacKay Memorial Hospital in Taipei, she’d found out what it was like, firsthand, the inconvenience of the deaf-mute patients. A female deaf patient taught her sign-language, and hoped that she’d become a doctor for the deaf-mute community.
This female patient became the beginning instructor of Tsai’s sign language, in order to teach Tsai, the female patient took busses, transferring to Tsai’s home to teach her, and this one-on-one session lasted for six months, “Back then, as I’d taken it up, I’d had to draw out the hand signs, to make it stick to my memories.”
The expectation and offering of the female patient made Tsai realized that her dreams of opening up a “sign-language clinic” of her younger years, but, because of her marriage, her families, and her children, her dreams were, delayed, and, setting up a sign-language clinic became a distant dream for her, and, in a blink of an eye, over ten thousand days had flashed by.
Two years ago, Tsai, who was already a grandmother, met a sign language teacher at a sign language church in Tainan, it’d restarted her dreams of her younger years again, after last April, she’d started setting up sign-language office sessions at Tainan and Taipei, “but, I’d still felt that void inside.”
“I don’t want any regrets”, Tsai got into contact with the Christian Hospital in Taidong on her own, and there were NO sign-language doctor sessions in the area, and, the hospital and her hit it off, she’d set out to the east twice every week, Tsai told gladly, “I got to live two dreams at the same time”, working in the distant areas, helping those who are hearing impaired too.
“It is inconvenient, for the hearing impaired to see the doctors”, Tsai said, using the pen or a translator to communicate is very difficult, and, in times of emergency, it was, even more difficult. She’d once seen a deaf patient who was in the terminal stage of cancer, but because it was hard for the doctors her patient saw to communicate with him, the patient and the families didn’t even know, it was, heartbreaking for her.
Tsai said, there was, a hearing impaired patient who had lung cancer, and, after he’d met her, he’d finally become aware, of his own conditions. The look of relief that the patient had, is still, imprinted inside of her mind to date. And, it’s exactly this sort of thing, that kept her going, in setting up the sign-language physicians’ offices all over the places.
“Sign language IS a language too.” Tsai said, through communicating with sign language, it was like communicating in English with American patients. She said, “sign language had become one of the languages I used in my office, it’s just that I’m using my hands to speak is all.”
“The patients who had to have a translator, or written things down from before, all started smiling radiantly after they came to my sign-language physician’s session.”, Tsai started smiling radiantly, as she talked of her experiences in the “voiceless doctor’s office visits”. She expects, that the smiles of those hearing impaired patients can start to bloom, all over the Hualien-Taidong regions.
And so, this doctor saw a need, and, became the one to fulfill the needs of the patients who are hearing impaired, and that just still shows, that if you have the heart, anything IS possible.
Life, the Obstacle Course 