The book starts with Louise and Thomas a couple who has one child, a son, Bruce. When Bruce is three, he gets German measles or rubella. After finding this out, Louise discovers that, she is pregnant with their second child. When Louise took Bruce to the doctor to get all of the information on the measles, the doctor was worried about Louise’s pregnancy, even thought she was not very far along. The doctor said that being around someone with these measles could possibly cause congenital defects for the baby. Of course, upon hearing this, Thomas and Louise went through a very worrisome and anxious nine months until the baby was born.
Lynn was born in April of 1965. She is a joy to the parents because she seems to be a perfectly healthy and normal child, despite the anxious pregnancy that the couple had went through. Relieved, the parents were happy to have such a beautiful happy baby. However, at six months the parents fear had come back. There was a fourth of July parade where many families gathered. Lynn had fallen asleep before the fireworks started. The parents had anticipated Lynn to wake up and deal with the fussy baby because of all of the noise and commotion. However, she slept right through the fireworks and the noises of them and the cheers from the crowd.
This is when Thomas and Louise knew that their baby was deaf. Thomas and Louise started to take Lynn to their doctor Dr. Bales. Even though the parents expressed their concerns, Dr. Bales said that Lynn was too young to do any testing on and that she seemed perfectly normal and could not even find anything wrong with her ears. The parents were still concerned so Dr. Bales suggested that they see a specialist, however this was after many anxious and scary appointments where the parents could not find out what was wrong with their daughter.
What made this even more frightening for Thomas and Louise was that while they were trying to teach Lynn to speak and form words she forms everything except for sounds coming from her parents voices. The parents took Lynn to the specialist and said that was nothing wrong with Lynn’s ears and if it could be deafness it would be a nerve problem. This doctor then recommends her to another specialist, an audiologist at Children’s Memorial Hospital. The family headed out to California to go to the John Tracey Clinic.
This was a clinic that specialized in deafness; the family finally thought that they could get the nswers that they desperately had been wanting. The audiologist that they met with and tested Lynn was Mrs. Caldwell. First, however the Spradely’s met with Dr. Murphy who tested Lynn to see how she was developing mentally and physically. Even though Lynn was not yet walking, she was still crawling well and could walk if she had something to hold her up and walk against. She was helping put her clothes on and besides talking and not being able to hear Dr. Murphy said that she was normal child. Lynn was small for her age so she was physically developing slowly but she was normal.
This put the Spradley’s at ease for their fear that Lynn was cognitively disabled was gone. When they went to Mrs. Caldwell for the testing, they were in for a waiting game. There was a series of tests that Lynn had to go through. Lynn ended up having a severe hearing impairment. At cycles per second Lynn was at a loss of 95 decibels the family was continually reminded that Lynn was not fully deaf but just had a severe hearing impairment that could possibly be improved, The testing at Lynn’s age was unreliable and the family held on to both of those hopes.
At this point they visit the John Tracy clinic they has talked about teaching Lynn to sign, hearing aids and the extent to her hearing loss and how she would have to learn to hear. Years after were spent with a duration of training her hearing the usage of hearing aids. Lip-reading and talking were the only logical communication skills Louise and Thomas believed Lynn could use. Lynn was able to lip read a great deal of words but not enough to get by in society. Everything seemed hopeless and stressful to her and her parents, from tantrums to frustration.
