A deaf Fresno mother who accompanied her teen daughter at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera for emergency surgery said what should have been a two-day stay stretched more than a week because staff left her out of important conversations.
Rosemary Wanis said the frustrating nine-day hospital stay left her daughter, Rashelle Diaz, “traumatized by this experience.”
“It was a horrible experience for me. For her, she’s not ever going to trust another doctor and be willing to go to the hospital for another checkup, ever,” Wanis, 50, said through an American Sign Language interpreter.
The case highlights the difficulty the deaf and hard of hearing community in Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley face in securing interpreter services during hospital visits — even when a care facility has more than one option at its disposal.
Wanis, a professor at Fresno State and Ohlone College in Fremont, said her requests for communication from Valley Children’s were ignored and met with hostility by some staffers while her 16-year-old daughter was rushed in for two surgeries in 2022.