Ageless Passions by Karen Putz

Category: Uncategorized

  • LaRonda Zupp–Client Support Specialist

    As a Client Support Specialist for DCARA, LaRonda provides a variety of services to deaf and hard of hearing senior citizens every day.  She meets with clients to provide peer counseling, advocacy, document translation and communication assistance.  She also coordinates interpreter services.  Her office is located at Fremont Oak Gardens, an apartment complex with 50 apartments.

    In addition to meeting with several clients each day, LaRonda provides classes in exercise and nutrition twice a week.  “I coordinate Community Education two or three times a month,” said LaRonda.  “These classes include topics that cover deaf issues, health issues and senior issues.  I teach a lot of independent living skills to help seniors stay connected to their world and live independently.”

    LaRonda holds a B.A. degree in Deaf Studies and an M.S. in Counseling.  In addition to her degrees, LaRonda holds certificates in Parent Education, Non-Profit Management and Adult Education.

    “I have a lot of paper to hang on my wall of fame,” LaRonda chuckled.

    Before coming to DCARA, LaRonda worked as a Parent Educator for deaf and hard of hearing parents for eight years.  She spent ten years as a School Counselor at the Washington School for the Deaf.  “I believe my jobs have chosen me,” LaRonda said. “I never went out looking for them.  Most often, they have fallen in my lap.  I have had a number of bosses come up to me and simply say ‘I want you to come work for me. Want a job?’  I lick my finger, hold it up to the wind and trust in the will of heaven.  I know that wherever I go, I’m supposed to be there.   The one thing I choose to do is remain serving the Deaf Community.”

    LaRonda has a piece of advice that she’d like to share with those who are exploring their life path:

    Listen with the ear of your heart. The path we choose is not always the path we think we want. Our paths often choose us. My advice is be true to what you know about yourself and follow your bliss. If you don’t know what your bliss is, take risks to find out. Live life outside of the box a bit and trust your journey will become you.

    Don’t be afraid to dance, just get out there and boogie!  Take risks.  Try new things.  Don’t limit yourself.  Burst forth.  You will discover how beautiful you are and how enriching life can be when you just get out there and give it your best!”

    For more on LaRonda, visit her blog:  The Ear of my Heart.

     

     

     

     

  • Leonard Hall, Attorney

    There’s no typical day of work for the City of Olathe Legal Department.  Leonard Hall, a deaf attorney who works for the city, takes care of land acquisition, eminent domain, zoning, and construction contracts.  Toss in a little bit of ADA, Tax Law and Development Standards, and you can see why the Assistant City Attorney is busy from eight in the morning to six at night.  On Tuesday nights, he is involved with City Council meetings.   

    “I like my job,” says Leonard.  “I usually see the ‘final products,’ such as commercial shopping centers, interchanges, road improvements or bridge projects completed by the city.” 

    Leonard has a background in business and he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Social Sciences at Emporia State  University.  He attended Emporia on a scholarship for long distance running and participated in the World Games for the Deaf.  “I hold one world record for the deaf for the three-mile run and four American records in other events,” Leonard shared. 

    Leonard worked in his father’s business, Hall Truck Line, which gave him a solid background in business.  With a strong desire to help people and provide service to deaf people, Leonard decided to continue his schooling to become an attorney.  He obtained a Juris Doctor Degree in Law at Washburn University Law School in Kansas. 

    Leonard still finds time to write a weekly column for the Olathe News.  He became a columnist in 1993 and has produced over 700 articles for the newspaper.  He is also the coordinator of the Kansas City Coffee Chat– a social, monthly gathering of deaf and hard of hearing individuals. 

    Leonard’s newest challenge is learning to adjust to the new sounds produced by his cochlear implant.  He had surgery in July of this year and wears a hearing aid in the other ear.  “I am going through a world of changes with my hearing,” says Leonard.  “My ability to understand speech went down to 5% before the surgery.  Now I am back up to understanding 30% of speech with my implant and my hearing aid.  I hope to increase it to 50% with the implant.” 

    Leonard is enjoying the new sounds but explains that it is a lot of hard work.  “I like it, but it is a very difficult process — first the surgery, second, the mapping to increase the level of hearing and understanding, and third, the difficulty of adjusting to each level of hearing.   It has been a long four months of making a lot of adjustments and many more months to go.”

    Leonard is married to Charla, who is hard of hearing and has a vision impairment.  They have one pre-teen son, Daniel who has hearing in the normal range.

     

     

     

  • What I Learned From… My Dog

    Today’s post is a hat tip to Robert Hruzek, the guy who wears a twenty-gallon cowboy hat.  (Yeah, it isn’t ten-gallon anymore–have you seen the price of gas lately?)  Every week, Robert corrals a bunch of people to write about stuff and the current theme is:  What I Learned From Animals. 

    Instead of slaving away like the rest of us, Robert and his wife are lounging on vacation at Laity Lodge.  But to be fair, he did submit his entry before he left:

    The First Step to Effective Communication.  Go read it, he’s got some funny stuff about a deaf cat.

    I’ve decided to turn this blog post over to Kaycie, my West Highland White Terrier, whom my sister-in-law/dog-groomer affectionately calls a mutt, because she’s missing some AKC papers.   I had a long talk with Kaycie the other day and she taught me a few things.  So I’m letting her share it here.  Without further ado, here’s Kaycie:

    Woof, woof, arrh, arf, ARF, arroooooo.

    (Uh Kaycie, you need to use English here.  Not everyone is versed in doggie-speak.)

    Hi, my name is Kaycie.  Karen went upstairs to take a hot bath and read a book.  I’m going to share a few things that I’ve observed in my life that you can apply to yours.

    First of all, I see you people running around a lot, darting from one activity to the next.  The garage door keeps going up and down, up and down, several times a day.  It keeps interrupting my sleep.  And you know what happens when you don’t get enough sleep?  That’s right.  You end up with a cranky dog.  I’m more likely to snap at you when I don’t get my zzzz’s.

    But, while we’re on the subject of sleep–let’s talk about naps.  For some reason, I don’t see you people getting enough sleep, nor taking enough time out for naps.  Don’t you know that a nap does wonders?  When you’re tired, ya gotta slow down and take a nap.  Heck, when I take a little ten-minute power nap, then I’m up and ready to chase some rabbits.  I get a lot more speed on me that way.  Every day, I gotta get those varmits outta the yard for Karen.  She doesn’t like it when her pretty yellow flowers are chomped on.

    Speaking of being on top of my game, every now and then I like to take some time to zone out–or as you people call it– meditation.  Sometimes I get really stressed out when I can’t find my bones among the mess in the house.  I take a few minutes to calm my mind and then I fire up the nose again.  I can usually find my bones that way.

    I also find that it’s important to learn something new each day.  Not only can I follow commands by voice, but I know them in sign language too.  I get a little pissed at my master though, because in the winter time, she’s inside signing “go to the bathroom” and I’m outside in the cold trying to take a dump.   But anyway, I was talking about learning new stuff.  That’s how I keep my mind sharp– I like to try new things.  I tried taking up guitar, but discovered that I didn’t have any talent in that department. 

    Of course, Karen doesn’t like everything I try.  For instance, I once tried to chew the leg on a kitchen chair.  Karen got all cranky and there were a couple of “No’s!” hollered at me.  I learned to let that one go.

    I’ve learned that sometimes you gotta love your enemies.  Grandma has a big collie named Sonny.  I don’t like Sonny all that much–he likes those Milk Bones out of a box and I won’t have anything to do with those tastes-like-paper-fake-looking-bones stuff.  But somehow, we get along and every now and then, we’ll head to the yard and chase away the squirrels together.

    Everyone needs a friend or two to hang out with.  I hang out with my dog pals, Buddy and Pepper when they come over to visit.  Once in a while, we get on each other’s nerves and have a brawl–especially when one of them digs into the wrong supper bowl–but we find a way to get over it and buddy up again.

    But you know what’s important in life?  The ones you love.  I get all excited when the kids come home from school.  I jump all over and tell them I love them.  When Grandma Griffard comes to visit, even though she’s not crazy about dogs, I roll over and let her rub my belly and she finds a way to love me too.   Every night, I hop into bed with Karen and curl up at the nook in the back of her knees.  Once in a while, I go over and give Joe a nudge.

    Life is good.  Enjoy it.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Discovering the Deaf Gene in my Family

     

    From left to right: Thomas Friedman, Penny Friedman, Dr. Andrew Griffith, Karen Putz and Anne Madeo  

    For many years, my family was unique when it came to stories about hearing loss.   Everyone in my family, for five generations, was born with hearing in the normal range.  My Mom started losing her hearing as a teen.  She became deaf at the age of 27.  “I was at a family BBQ and all of a sudden, I realized I couldn’t hear anything,” Mom shared.  “I could see that lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.”  Just like that, my Mom became deaf.   Her five siblings also were deaf or hard of hearing.

    I have four older siblings.  My sister, Linda, was almost three years old when she fell off of a chair and hit her head on the corner of a baseboard.  Later that week, my Mom noticed that she wasn’t responding to people.   She began to stop talking.  She was diagnosed with a profound hearing loss.  My brother, Dennis, grew up with normal hearing and at the age of 36, he was hit on the head by a wooden beam at work and woke up in the hospital with severe hearing loss.  My sister, Jeanie, grew up with a unilateral hearing loss and around the same age as my mom, began losing more hearing.  In her mid-forties, she slipped on a rug and became profoundly deaf.   My brother, Kenny, developed a moderate hearing loss in his 40’s. 

    I became very sick with a high fever as a child and my parents believe it was that illness which triggered my hearing loss when I was in elementary school.  My first hearing aid was given to me when I was nine- but I only wore when at school.  I found that it caused headaches and tinnitus and I often took it off after school and never touched it during the summer.   When I was 19, I was waterskiing on my bare feet at a high speed and fell sideways into the water.  For weeks, I thought I just couldn’t get the water out of my ear.  I had become profoundly deaf.  From that point on, hearing aids were a constant thing in my life.  Years later, my brother Kenny also lost some hearing from barefooting.

    Whenever I would share my family’s story about how we all became deaf and hard of hearing, people would be incredulous at the events that lead to hearing loss.  “Y’all need to stop banging your heads,” one person remarked.

    I knew that genetics obviously played a part, as there were so many family members sporting hearing aids.  We went through the testing at Gallaudet for the Connexin gene and it came back negative.

    My friend, Tina Childress, an audiologist, said to me one day, “I think your family has Large Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome (LVAS).”

    So off I went to the ENT to take a pretty picture of the inside of my head.  “No, you don’t have LVAS,” said the radiologist who read the scan.    

    I then sent the CT scan results to Anne Madeo, a genetic researcher at the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, to have them take a look.   Anne asked some questions about our family history to construct a “pedigree”, a term that researchers use to describe a family in graph form.

    “Because the inheritance of the hearing loss looked as though it was coming from women through to all of their children, but from none of the men to their children, we thought there was a very good chance that it was due to a mutation in one of the mitochondrial genes,” said Anne.

    With our permission, Anne assembled a team (Andrew Griffith, Penny Friedman, and Thomas Friedman)  from NIH and we all gathered at my home.   The team spent the day collecting information from each family member and drew blood for the genetic testing.   

    We learned that we are the third family in the world identified with a mutation in the mitochondrial gene.  The specific mutation is called 7510T>C.  The most interesting thing to family members was learning that our specific mutation, like all mitochondrial genes, is passed through female family members. There is almost a 100% guarantee of passing the mutation from a female to the offspring, but not from the males. 

    What this means for my children is that my daughter will have children with this gene, but my sons will not.

    People have asked me why we pursued the genetic testing in our family.  There were two reasons for it.  One of my nieces was hard of hearing.  My other niece began to suspect that she might be losing her hearing.  However, tests showed that her hearing was within normal limits.  A nephew also had an episode where he thought he was losing his hearing as well.  So we wanted to figure out the genetic pattern and see how the gene moved through the family.  The other reason was simple:  after years of questions from other people, we wanted to see if we had a name for the gene.

    The results were surprising for my nieces and nephews.  The niece who thought she had the gene was relieved to find out she didn’t.  While she was happy to find out that she didn’t have the gene, she also felt a sense of “survivor guilt,” in knowing this information.   My other niece has it and will pass it on to her children should she have kids.  My nephews didn’t participate in the research, but from what we know about the gene, we know what we can conclude for each of them.  One nephew has the gene, the others do not.  The biggest shock came to me months later, when a cousin of mine obtained hearing aids and then mentioned that her kids were struggling in the classroom.   I suddenly realized that the gene was in their family as well.  Her grandmother and my mother were sisters.

    “I think sometimes, on a really fundamental level, it can make you wonder who you are when you learn something like this about a specific gene mutation” said Anne.  “Even though I know and try to tell people that we all carry gene mutations-they don’t define us.  Yet, suddenly you’ve learned something fundamental about yourself that you didn’t know before.”

    Sometimes learning about genetic results can shake up a family or cause individuals to blame one another.  “That probably happens most in families that weren’t doing well already,” explained Anne.  “Maybe it wasn’t a strong marriage, maybe the diagnosis in the family was really tough, maybe they’re going through an already stressful time.  Not every family (at all) starts pointing fingers.”

    For my own family, the information we learned was simply an interesting piece of the puzzle that has been unfolding over the years.   My only beef with the researchers is that they didn’t give this gene a cool name.  So in my family, we’re naming this gene in honor of my mother and grandmother:   the Valle gene.

    For more information on genetic research:

    http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/

    http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/research/scientists/griffith.asp

      Dr. Andrew Griffith with my Dad

     Penny Friedman and my brother, Kenny

     

     

     

     

     

  • Football, I Hate Football

    I hate football.

    There.  I said it.

    My oldest kiddo is in football camp at his high school.  I tried to talk him out of it, but it fell on deaf ears (oh yeah, pun intended!).  So here I am at Panera Bread each morning as I wait for him to sweat out two hours of hitting other guys.  It’s a 20-minute/half hour drive each way, so it makes no sense for me to head back home after dropping him off.

    When I picked him up yesterday, he was covered head-to-toe in sweat but had a huge smile on his face.  He excitedly told me about the drills and how his neck hurt from craning it to see the interpreter while face-down during some exercise.  He’s the only deaf kid at the camp, but there are two others in different grades.

    “It was hell, Mom, but I loved it!” he said.

    Did I tell you that I hate football?

    I used to actually like it.  Back in college, I would follow football on TV and actually sit next to the hubby and watch entire games.  We even hooked up the tv in the bathroom and watched an entire playoff game when the Bears were playing– from the tub, complete with snacks and drinks.  (What can I say, we were thin and in college back then!  Mom, cover your eyes and don’t read this.)

    Then along came Fantasy Football.  The kids were little.  I still liked football enough to help the hubby decide on a few players to play each Sunday.  I listened to him as he agonized over the player’s fumbles, the low passing scores or an injured player.  I celebrated when his wide receivers racked up yards and scored touchdowns.  I even attended the Fantasy Football drafts to help the guys run the meetings. 

    Good gosh.

    As the boys became older, the hubby sucked them right into football.  The youngest kiddo dog-eared his favorite football book to the point it fell apart in two.   He could tell you which helmet belonged to which team and one year, he was fixated on the Maimi Dolphins and received a Dolphins headrest for his bed.  We’ve got Raider pillows and another bedrest for the oldest kiddo featuring some green team.  (That’s how much I don’t follow football anymore, I can’t tell you the name of the team  even though I pass by his bed every morning.)

    The oldest kiddo played football in eighth grade.  I went to a few games and cringed every time I saw him slam into another kid.   I know why I hate football, it just seems so brutal to me now and I hate seeing the guys hit into each other.  Plus, I’m afraid my kid is gonna get hurt.  Or hurt someone else.

    So this fall, I plan to attend the football games with my dark sunglasses on. 

    Perhaps I can weasle in nap time during the games.

     

     

     

  • Writing Up at Christie Lake

    Calm view of the lake

    I’m up in Michigan this weekend with the hubby and kids, visiting my parents and sister.  I love the view in the morning from the kitchen window– watching the mist on the water evaporate when the sun comes up.  I usually miss this as I sleep late up here, but the oldest kiddo woke me up early– asking where I packed his glasses. He almost never wears them, but this time,  I remembered to bring them along.   Both boys took off in the pontoon to go fishing.

    I always enjoy writing in the kitchen and looking out at the lake.  Dad has several bird feeders in front of the window and we’ve seen so many different varieties of birds.  I especially love watching the cardinals, yellow finches and the occasional woodpecker.  Every now and then, we’ll get a visit from a blue jay.

    When we arrived yesterday, I noticed that my Mom’s peonies were in full bloom.  There’s a bit of a story behind this particular peony bush. 

    One year, Mom decided to move the peony bush to the edge of the property.  She dug up the bush, taking care to keep the root ball intact, and planted it in a different spot.  The following year, it died.  It didn’t make it through the tough Michigan winter. Mom later learned that she chose the wrong time of the year to move it, and peonies don’t move well when they’re dug up.  Mom resigned herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to see those pretty magenta blooms ever again.

    That spring, Mom noticed a tiny sprout in the old spot.  She must have left a little bit of root from the original bush in the ground, and there it was, growing back again.  She can now enjoy the stunning blooms again each year.

    peony flower

     I guess there’s a lesson in here– always make sure you have a backup if Plan A fails. 

     

  • The Chicagoland Tweetup

    Last night, I headed over to Sanfratellos Pizza in Geneva, IL for the Chicagoland Tweetup.  I was late getting there, as I was wrestling with a videophone installation with routers that wouldn’t behave.

    A nice, small group was just what I needed.  I was fortunate to have Katie, a recent interpreter graduate who needed interpreting hours and she interpreted for me.  (Thanks, Katie!).   It was nice chatting with everyone and getting to know some of them better.

    Here’s who was there:  Wendy Piersall from Sparkplugging, Brad Shorr from Word Sell, Inc., Barbara Rozgonyi from Wired PR Works, Jeff O’Hara from Edmodo, Derek Semmler from DerekSemmler.com (who, by the way, really is a guy!), Carolyn Shelby from CShel, and Kim, and Jerome Hughes, Jim Goodrich and two  others one other I can’t remember.

    It was nice chatting about blogs, marketing and social media woes (time, who has time to keep up with it all?) and of course, the topic of the evening–Twitter.  The pizza was fantastic– great choice, Wendy!

    Here’s the link to the rest of the photos taken:

    Tweetchi Photos

    Fox Valley Tweetup

    And On The Fifth Day…

    Twitter-Uppers

     

  • My Kids Go to School Tomorrow, For One Hour


    Ok, can someone please explain this?

    Tomorrow is the last day of school for the kiddos.  The middle kid goes to school for an hour and half.  The youngest goes for just an hour.  The oldest has a final to take and will be done at 10:30 a.m.

    Can anyone explain the logic in firing up the buses, rounding up the teachers and turning on the lights to gather a bunch of students together to do–

    Nothing.

    I’d like to meet the brilliant guy/gal or group of people who came up with this idea. 

    “We have to send the kids to school a certain number of days/hours– we have an hour left over, let’s just tack it on to the last day.”

    The Illinois governor just announced that we have to figure out how to balance a $60 million dollar budget that is two billion dollars out of balance.  So, instead of dragging our kids out of bed and putting them on gas-guzzling buses to sing songs for an hour, why don’t we tack that hour on to one of those “half-day” scenarios that keep popping up throughout the year?

    It might not make much of a dent in a two-billion dollar budget, but it sure beats wasting a perfectly good day with nothing to do.

  • What If Steak ‘n Shake Gave Customers the Red Carpet?

    On the flight home from Oahu, I dove into The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service written by Donna Cutting.  I met Donna at the SOBCon ’08 conference — what a warm, engaging person she is!   Donna speaks all over the country on the topic of improving customer service and she gave me an autographed copy of her book.

    “The Celebrity Experience” is all about making customers feel like stars– welcoming them, greeting them and bending over backwards to service them.

    The companies that roll out the Red Carpet Treatment are the ones that retain their customers time and time again.  In her book, Donna shares the story of a company that was faced with a customer who wanted a pizza from Chicago delivered in London.  The company’s response?  “Yes, we can!”  And they made it happen. Of course, the company now has a dedicated customer as a result.

    What if you could find a way to say yes more frequently, Donna tells companies to ask themselves.  What if, instead of saying no, you asked yourself–how?

    So this made me think of Steak ‘n Shake.  What would happen if Steak ‘n Shake said “Yes, we can,” to the idea of making their drive-thrus accessible?

    Right now, I’m certainly not getting the Red Carpet Treatment from the company, despite being a former loyal customer of theirs.   After getting the drive-thru window slammed twice in my face back in January, I’ve been working with the corporation to try and get the company to cherish and welcome  deaf and hard of hearing customers into their drive-thrus and their restaurants.

    One of the solutions is to purchase a system called Order Assist, distributed by Inclusion Solutions.  For the cost of a couple of commercials, Steak ‘n Shake could make every single one of their drive-thrus accessible with this product.  Another alternative is a touch-screen menu like the one at the Subway restaurant in Lebanon, Indiana.  Steak ‘n Shake also needs to set up a policy and trainings on how to serve customers with disabilities in all areas of their restaurant.

    So, imagine if Steak ‘n Shake would roll out the Red Carpet Treatment and implement those changes.  Imagine if they would close-caption their commercials inviting deaf and hard of hearing customers to enjoy their milkshakes.  They could counteract the negative PR that results when anyone plugs “Steak ‘n Shake” into a search engine.  (Go ahead and type in “Steak ‘n Shake coupons” and you’ll see that people are coming to my blog as a result of this type of search. )

    Imagine if everyone saw “Steak ‘n Shake Gives the Red Carpet Treatment to Deaf and Hard of Hearing Drive-Thru Customers” instead.

     

  • Julia Anderson, Medical Coder

    Ask Julia Anderson about her job and she’ll tell you she “loves it!” Julia is a Clinical Data Coordinator at Advocate Christ Medical Center/Hope Chidren’s Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. She graduated from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in 1991 with a degree in Medical Records. She went on to obtain certification as a Registered Health Information Technician and Certified Coding Specialist.

    She’s been coding for many years and still loves it.

    Julia communicates in American Sign Language and utilizes interpreters for meetings. On the job, she had to come up with innovative ways to communicate with her co-workers. “I do not use the phone,” says Julia. “Email is my main source of communication. The associates in my hospital who I work with know that email is the best way to contact me.

    “I use paper and pen to communicate with co-workers, Julia continues. “Sometimes I will use a computer or laptop as well. If co-workers have questions, they will sign, fingerspell or email me.”

    Julia, along with another coordinator, supervises a staff of 24 medical coders and 4 unbilled staff. Julia’s path to becoming a coordinator was not an easy one. Back in 1999, while working as a coder, Julia applied to become a coordinator. She didn’t get the job and was quite disappointed. The job was given to Cathy Smyth, who happened to have a sister who was hard of hearing. As it turned out, Julia completed her internship years ago with Cathy’s sister at Advocate Christ Medical Center.

    In the beginning, Cathy and Julia communicated via paper and pencil. Cathy learned to fingerspell and slowly picked up signs. Today, Cathy and Julia communicate fluently in American Sign Language. Several other co-workers are learning sign as well.

    When the coordinator job opened up again four years ago, Cathy encouraged Julia to apply. This time, she obtained the job and continues to enjoy it today. “In my personal opinion,” Julia reflects back, “the director at that time did not think I was capable of doing the job due to the communication barrier.

    “I ended up proving her wrong when I got the second chance at the coordinator position.”