| The story of working with technology began when I was two years old. That was when I got my first set of hearing aids. After I got my hearing aids from my audiologist, it was like playing catch-up. Catching up to speed with all the new sounds and finding out new techniques to make life easier for me. I always had to touch to sense what was going on. It was definitely like a puzzle, putting all of the pieces together to understand the English language all my life. Different doctor appointments all the time, and doing the best I could to soak up all the new technology that was now embedded into my life.
Then came elementary school, where the challenges definitely got more intense. With all of the different sounds and lots of kids in the halls all the time, it made it hard to figure out who was talking to me and who was not. So, I got an FM system. It is a piece of technology that has a little microphone on it and a receiver, so someone would speak into the mic, whether it was a teacher or a student speaking, and the receiver helped me understand what everyone else was saying by cancelling out the background noise. I wore it around my waist and it got to the point where I barely remembered it was there.
With this technology starting in elementary school, I realized I have always had an auditory memory, meaning that I remember things better by hearing them. So saying that I lived by my hearing aids all throughout school is the understatement of the century. I always took my time to understand things and never rushed through anything.
Starting my technology journey so young and having it in multiple different ways has helped me progress through life by working with it, and not against it.
After graduating high school in 2009, I proceeded to Central Ohio Technical College to get my associate’s degree in Elementary Education. During this time, I also helped teach at St. Vincent De Paul Elementary School and every day was different. While in college, I got a CCTV, which is a device with a camera on it that helps zoom in on rather small text to enlarge it to a font that I can read. It also changes contrast for people who can read some contrasts better than others. I mostly used it to help with reading different textbooks. I also got extra time on tests in a quiet room which helped me focus. I also got large print books that helped me be able to read the articles we would talk about in class. Not much changed from high school to college. Learning how to advance from high school to college with the same technologies made college more normal to me because I already had the things I needed to succeed from high school. I graduated from college in 2014 and that was a huge success for me to start my adult life.
The Journey to Getting my Cochlear Implant After graduating from college, I started the journey to getting my cochlear implant, also known as CI. A cochlear implant is a sound processor that takes the everyday sounds we hear and changes them into sound waves that go directly to the brain. Getting my CI was anything but easy. I had to go through multiple tests with my audiologist to test if my hearing aids were not amplifying enough sounds, and then go through the process of seeing if I was eligible for the CI. The scariest part was the fact that once I got the surgery, there was no going back. When they do this major surgery, they kill off all of your natural hearing cells so then your body learns how to hear with the processor. After jumping through what felt like 1,000 medical hoops, we finally got the go-ahead for surgery.
Post surgery, it felt like I had to figure out how to sleep again. Every time I went to lie on my side, I felt like I was falling through the sky with serious vertigo. It was definitely a tough time trying to go back to work with just one hearing aid. We were trying to work with the technology when everything in me was working against it to heal.
Every two weeks, my family and I went to appointments with my audiologist and came home with different homework to work on different parts of hearing the world again. It was like I was two years old all over again, trying to navigate the world with this new technology. Just like when I was learning how to use my hearing aids. Once I got through all of those audiologist appointments, I realized that a hearing aid amplifies different sounds. My CI was like my FM system in the way that it clears the sounds and makes hearing simpler for me with less brain work and lip reading.
Little did I know over 10 years ago, getting a cochlear implant would always be a never-ending journey to find normalcy again. Some of the biggest things I remember were when my mom and I were outside hanging laundry and I heard the birds chirping for the first time and it scared me so much that I ran inside. Another memory was being able to hear my nieces and nephews' little voices and tune out the background noises while they were growing up. I was shocked by the unfamiliar sounds for the longest time, but I soaked up every second of it.
Home Ownership and Accessibility Then came home ownership. My mom’s neighbor was selling their home, and so we decided to jump waist-deep and buy it. We had to do a lot of restoration and renovation to the space. Almost floor to ceiling of things we renovated to make it a space accessible for me to be able to live independently. Accessible to me means I need as much light as possible to be able to see what’s going on. With my eyesight being about the same as looking through holes in a straw, the more light I can have in my space, the better.
While doing all the renovations, we started contacting my county’s board of DD to see what options there were to put into my home to accommodate my specific needs. We toured my county’s tech home and found a few pieces of technology that would be vital for me, such as a bed shaker alarm system to help me wake up in the mornings when I do not have my eyes and ears on. And having an integrated alarm system for fires, flooding, tornado warnings, and all things weather-related to make sure that I am able to get to safety. We also invested in a Ring camera system and a LOCKLY door lock, which is a device I can use to lock my door with my finger, my phone, or a combination within the door, so I can make sure my home is safe even when I am not home.
Little did I know that would just be a tiny sprinkle of technology to help make independent life more accessible for me. |
