Some young people travel from doctor to doctor. When I was growing up in New York City I was a patient in one of the oldest hospitals in the country. “Ugly” and “scary” are words that do not even begin to describe this place. It used to make me think of Bedlam. That was an institution in the jolly old England of the Middle Ages. Its reputation was worse than any horror movie you can imagine. That reputation was well earned. In my hospital, I was one of hundreds of patients in the clinic. I always saw more than one doctor at a time. Each clinic visit there was a group of new doctors serving their internship or residency. You know the gig.  They are trying to cram all there is to know about every disease or disability there is into their little heads while impressing their superiors big-time.  Almost every medical problem or disability on the planet could be found in this huge, over-crowded hospital. It was a great place for doctors to learn their craft. It was also a great place for a kid to learn how to be a patient. The hospital I grew up in was a “city hospital.” It was public, not private. It was a hospital for the poor and the indigent.

I learned very quickly. When faced with the need to adjust to a new doctor there are several things to remember.  The need to adjust comes up frequently in the city hospital, the “county general” of the television medical drama, or any of the garden variety of public health medical facilities for the poor.  You may not have the option to change the situation but at least you can know what to expect and brace yourself for it. I learned this in the wards of just such a crowded facility.

One of the first things to check for, in the new doctor or doctors presented to you, is eye contact. A sustained look, eye-to-eye, doctor to patient, more than once during the examination, is a hopeful sign. The doctor using your name when speaking to you is also a good sign. The absence of long discussions about you with someone else is a really positive sign. Talking about you while you are there, using the third person (our domain name) singular (he/him, she/her) or plural (they/them) is a dead giveaway. You are bound to eventually hear of yourself referred to as “it” through reference to your medical situation or disability, file or medical records. I can remember a medical chart being dropped on my lap as I sat in the wheelchair. The attendant was told to “Take it to third floor!”  Not a good sign. You know this one is not a keeper. But you just can’t get rid of the people who tick you off. You have to find a way to live with them while holding on to the concept of yourself as a person and NOT A DISEASE OR A DISABILITY. This can be very tricky. But it is possible to maintain your composure and sense of self while speeding through the health services systems on the conveyor belt of business management.

In this section we can talk about many things that affect our lives and things that just tick us off.  You will be introduced to two very interesting young people who live in the same state I live in. They will be able to share their wonderful lives in a home surrounded by nature and including cats, dogs, horses, birds and other wonderful things. They and their parents are bi-lingual. They communicate in two languages at the same time. In this case, bi-lingual means vocal English and American Sign Language. ASL is a wonderful language. It is only one of the many sign languages to be found all over the world. Every society, every culture, has its own sign language. We can talk about this and perhaps get to know each other through our differences as well as through our similarities. There will be interesting articles and information in this section. Remember, this is your chance to contribute as well.  In any case, GumboYah-Yah is the place to do it! 

Oh, before I forget, you might want to know what the title Gumbo Yah-Yah is all about. It is one of the many wonderful expressions we find in our distinctly American English language.  It means many people hanging around talking. My next-door neighbor, Betty, shared this one with me. I love the sound of it. Language has always fascinated me. Whether we communicate in voice or in sign language, there are wonderful and fun ways to use words. We can, and should, have fun with language. Here, at 3rd Person, I can promise you we will. Let me hear from you. I am sure you all have lots of suggestions.

A YOUNG PERSON + A DREAM = CHANGING THE WORLD

 Let’s talk about the contributions of a young man, only 15 years old when he had a wonderful vision, and how he still influences the world more than a hundred years after his time. His name was Louis Braille. He was born in l809 and died in l852. Although he lived a short life, by today’s standards, in his brief 43 years Louis created the system of raised dots that formed the system of reading and writing for people who are blind. It is a tactile, or touch, system that allows the reader to feel each letter of the alphabet as it appears in “dot” form. The writer uses a celled template as a guide and a stylus to “punch out” the dots. Each letter is formed in what is called a cell or space of two dots wide by three dots long. 
 

The Braille cells, to the sighted person, looks like the small graphic to your right on this page. In his mind, Louis Braille saw each of the letters of the alphabet as sets of dots that

Louis was born with sight but became blind, after an injury, when he was three years old. As a blind child, he was introduced to different methods for reading and learning. At the time, some teachers taught blind students to read by feeling raised letters of the alphabet with their fingertips. As the student traced the letter, passing his or her fingertips over the raised surface of each letter, they could identify the letters, one at a time. The reader then put the letters together to form a word. Letter by letter and word by word. As a student, Louis Braille decided that there must be a better system for presenting the letters of the alphabet to blind students. At 15 years of age Louis was a visionary, a person who saw the world through a different vision. He invented a system to enable himself, and millions of others, to reach out through education and communication. Many people who are sighted have heard of Braille but have never been introduced to it as a system of written language. It is actually quite beautiful in its form. Each letter of the alphabet, A through Z, is coded in dots that can be felt and “read” by the touch of the blind reader. With training and practice, the blind reader comes to know the meaning of each set of dots in the same way the sighted reader knows each letter of the alphabet and “reads” them together to form words, sentences, thoughts and meaning. The sighted reader employs visual or sight memory while the blind reader employs tactile or touch memory to memorize, learn and use the system of dots to gather information through reading. Braille, a system of writing and reading, was created in the mind and through the experiences of a 15 year-old boy. Louis Braille was not too young to be a visionary. His age was not a drawback to the development of his incredible gift.

   There is an old saying that defines creativity as “ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.”  In other words, the idea or dream is only part of the creative act. The idea must be developed. In order to develop the idea the person must believe in herself or himself and be willing to work hard. At the foundation of the idea and the work necessary to develop that idea is belief in the self. If you believe in yourself, all things are possible. At the age of fifteen, Louis Braille believed in himself. He developed the system of Braille that is still used today, more than a hundred years later, to enable reading, writing and communication between people who are blind and those who are sighted. If anyone ever tells you that you are too young to make a positive, creative difference in the world, don’t get angry or depressed. Just realize that you are dealing with a very shortsighted person. It is not that they are trying to destroy your dream. Perhaps they never really had enough faith in themselves to believe that they could change the world for the better. And that is very sad.

 Why not do some more research on Louis Braille? His name appears in every dictionary, encyclopedia and in every library. You can find him on the Web.

 You may want to check out 3RD-Person.com, the Book Worm page, and read about another man whose early life, childhood and adolescence, were the foundation of the talents he employed in his adult life to make a difference for people the world over.  His name was Joseph De Veuster. He became Father Damien. He traveled to Hawaii and in 1873 chose to move permanently to the island of Molokai and serve as priest and friend to the residents. There he made profound changes in the lives of people who had contracted a terrible disease. The disease was called leprosy. The people were called lepers, identified by the name of the painful disease that would eventually claim their lives. 

For thousands of years, people called lepers had been pushed away from every society on the face of the earth.  They were punished for their illness, for being different. They were punished for having a disease called Leprosy. They were victims of the fears of others. But this young boy, Joseph, who grew up in Belgium, thousands of miles from the Hawaiian Islands, became a man the world will never forget. His is a story of courage, of putting into action all that he learned in his childhood and teenage years, and changing the world for the better. Check this one out! Let us all know what you think of this wonderful life. Do you see any similarity between his time and ours? And, what do you think you can do to make a difference in today’s world? 

= Geri