 My name is Vicki Borisk. I live in Portland, Maine. I married to a deaf man named Alvin Toby Borisk. I went to the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Falmouth, Maine. I graduated from the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf on June 7th, 1970. My first job was here at Mercy Hospital from February 1970 to the present time, which is a total of 45 years on the job. 45 years. At the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf, they sent me here to Mercy Hospital for the training in the laundry in 1970. That's when I started working here part-time while I was still going to school. And after I graduated, I worked here in the laundry full-time after that from 1970 until 1990. I don't remember exactly which year, 1991, 1992, maybe. Now, I no longer work in the laundry, and I work in the department called Environmental Services since 1991 or 2002. I clean. I mop. I dust. I wash the windows in the patient's room, as well as in the x-ray department and radiography. So it's cleaning. I had an interpreter from Pine Tree Society for the Deaf who helped me a lot. Those interpreters have been coming here for a long time. I only need interpreters for meetings on the 3rd of every month. I was recognized for my 30 years of employment. And at the 30-year mark, I got recognized. I also won an award as employee of the year and won a cruise to Bermuda. And the special parking lot, a parking spot at State Street. Free parking, priority parking for one year for being employee of the year. I'm still working. I'm not ready for retirement yet. I'm not sure when I will be. Perhaps one or two more years of work. I've never gotten SSDI. And in fact, I'm learning about the retirement process and my options from the employees here at Mercy Hospital. I've been saving for my retirement and on top of that, Mercy Hospital also puts in some money into my retirement fund. I communicate with all of the hearing people around me because I wear my hearing aid. And that helps me a lot on the job. If I don't understand a word, then I ask people to write it down on paper so that's how we can communicate. There's a few nurses who know a little bit of sign language. They may be know their alphabet. They're not really skilled at American sign language, but they can finger spell things so we can get our point across. Okay. When I started in 1970... There were a few people who I knew well, who work with me regularly in the laundry. And those same people were some people who did learn some sign language because it was just the group of us together all the time. And I taught one person, one woman, who became quite skilled at sign language. So now I'm all over the hospital and not very many people know how to sign. Well, every once in a while, you know, there might be somebody outside on the sidewalk who might have fallen. And because I'm so visually oriented, I saw through the window that somebody slipped on the ice last year and fell. And I noticed it and I mentioned it to the nurse who then called people and we brought a stretcher out and brought that person into the emergency room. I think it would be great if we had a few more deaf people and more people who could sign here. I mean, there's very few people who know how to sign and I'm the only deaf employee. I am very happy that the people here, the staff at Mercy, are so helpful and they've all taught me. They're willing to have me teach them signs. And they've put in safety measures for me, like if there's a call to 911, if there's a fire in the lobby, there's adaptive devices and phones for deaf people to use. So it's been a lot of help. They've really gone out of their way for me here.