Own Those Noises (On Your Phone)

sound design: Bobbie Gardner

Reflection 1

The BingBong is the sound of the alarm the drip machine makes whenever you need more chemo or meds or something’s wrong with the drip machine. The most annoying time the BingBong goes off has to be during the night. Sometimes you’re on the machine for 24 hours and usually it goes off every 1 – 3 hours. When you’re already really tired from chemo, operations, etc, you really don’t need this machine going BingBong throughout the night always waking you up. Of all the people who hear it – patients, nurses, family, friends – patients find it most annoying as we are constantly attached to this walking alarm that never shuts up. It also always goes off at the worst time, like when your favourite programme’s on, when you’re with friends, or when you’re sleeping. It would be good to have the BingBong as a ringtone because it would nice having that nostalgic sound that only you understand. I hated the sound when I was in hospital, but now as I don’t hear it that often, I like it. When I hear it I think of all the people I’ve met, all the fun times playing pool in TCT, getting to wear SpongeBob pyjamas all day (with no one saying a word), playing pranks on nurses and all the good times spent in hospital. – George

Reflection 2

It drives us mad. We hear it when we go home, we hear it in our sleep. That annoying sound needs to be there, as it lets us know when there’s a problem, of course. But then it’s busy and you hear one go off and you think ‘that’s not meant to go off now’ and you don’t want to leave it for too long, so you’re rushing around, trying to get to it because you know it’s so annoying for these patients with it right next to their ear. Potential problems include air in the drip, a block, an occlusion, or that the battery’s gone, or there’s a faulty drip… There are solutions for all of them, but some of them take a long time. When there is air down the line, you have to spend a long time flicking it up and out, but when the battery’s gone, I’m like ‘Oh, brilliant, plug it back in’ and then there’s that sorted. Yeah, they drive me nuts, some more than others. There are some that just… argghhh! – Laura