Deaf ? Don't Call the Doctor in This "House"

I was looking up stuff on DeafRead when I found a review of a House episode. I decided to take a look, and well...here is a selection from the review and my thoughts on the topic.

- AMP (A Misunderstood Person)

"When I sit down on Monday nights to watch House I expect to be mildly insulted and wickedly entertained. Unfortunately last night I was just shocked by the amount of ignorance spread by the writer's of the show. The episode centered around a young deaf wrestler who falls to the ground with exploding sensations in his head. After a bit of investigating he is diagnosed with "NF2 cancer" and told treatment would be relatively simple, and that afterward he may regain his hearing which he lost at age 4. Throughout the show the boy is referred to as an idiot and insulted repeatedly for being a well adjusted deaf child. At one point during a simple brain biopsy House directs Chase to put in a Cochlear Implant, without any planning or a specialist. It was actually hilarious. The boy wakes up and House is in his hospital room tuning his CI as he begins to awaken. He can immediately hear the tiniest of sounds, and within hours is asking if his speech sounds slurred as he hears his deaf girlfriend for the first time. He looks at her pitifully as she walks away. House is excused from forcing this contraption onto an unwilling patient because he "did the idiot a favor" by providing him with hearing. I expect that sort of belligerence from House, but even the other characters mirrored his viewpoint. The deaf boy was called an idiot and a moron repeatedly, and at the end when he is touched to hear his name on his Mother's voice he accepts his new gift and all is supposedly well.

I can deal with the fact that House is a fictional show, and not known for medical accuracy. How can they disregard the potential ignorance they are spreading about NF2 though? I do not have cancer, now all of my friends who watch House are probably thinking oh lord she has cancer! Should I be expecting muffin baskets? (Probably not.) When you are deafened by NF2 removing the tumors does not bring your hearing back, and may in fact also cause facial paralysis and disequilibrium. So aside from the general ignorance of NF2, the attack on Deaf Culture was nothing short of hurtful. There were not a handful of tongue in cheek remarks, the episode was a nonstop diatribe about the stupidity of Deaf people to stay hearing impaired when there are supposedly magical implants that can fix anyone. These implants rarely work on people with NF2, and I already deal with people on a daily basis who treat me with disdain and contempt, as though it's my own fault I am deaf. Thank you House for further increasing the misconceptions of deaf people, and causing all of us Deaf to turn off our TVs feeling like we just got beat up in gym class. For a show that generates millions of dollars in profit, you would think they could afford a medical fact checker, or at least a writer with enough common sense to write a witty joke without being bigoted toward an entire culture of people. The show had a chance to be a platform for the deaf, and instead reminded most of us exactly why many Deaf don't want anything to do with the hearing world."

- From Fabulous Running Mommy on DeafRead, NF2 House

Here are My Thoughts on the Topic:

While I don't watch House on a daily basis, I feel this woman's pain about this episode being little more than an attack on Deaf Culture. Srsly, there's no real reason why it's just a good idea to go, "Hey, let's just insult the deaf wrestler! Deaf people are too stupid to know how to watch TV, and our viewers will love it so much that we'll be rolling in cash!'

Meh, just because deaf people can't hear, doesn't mean they don't have feelings at all...but of course, most people don't realize this and just assume they're stupid because they totally can't hear them and misinterpret stuff because...yeah, the answer is obvious. They can't hear! >_> And you wonder why deaf people don't want anything to do with the hearing world...

So, about the 'boy gets cochlear implant, he gets to hear everything again, everything is just fine' part. Maybe that kind of scenario works in your mind, but in real life, no. Just no...after all, you have to learn how to use a cochlear implant to get anything out of it, and that usually takes a few months or years depending on how good a learner you are or how deaf you are (born deaf or just deaf in adulthood). You see, the implant sends sensations to your brain, and these can be a real pain to get a hang of. Whether it's solved or not, depends on what the deaf man or woman thinks, and it's usually never solved for them. Many deaf people end up abandoning the implant after a few years, because they either believe that being able to hear stuff again is not worth the hassle they have to go through to recognize these sensations that are either very confusing to get a hang of, or just a real pain. Or, they prefer just not hearing stuff like hearing people can or for some other reason.

In any case, cochlear implants....they don't ever work in real life like how House depicts it. So meh on that.

NOTE:

tl;dr version: The creators of House need to get better writers that know how to make a joke without being biased towards cultures of people who might take offense at it, or at least get a medical fact checker.