Welcome back to the All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein. And this is the All About YOU episode. If you are new around here, welcome! Every other episode is all about YOU. Some of your reactions, your experiences with audiology and this week, an incredible interview with an audiologist who is also a cochlear implant user! Her name is Dr. Samantha McKinney and she is also a pediatric cochlear implant audiologist, who herself has gotten a cochlear implant a few years ago. She’s going to tell us her story, which is just so interesting, inspiring and specifically fascinating because she knows both sides of everything that’s going on, both from the patient perspective and from the audiologist perspective. You can see so many of her great blog posts and tips and information at youcicanhearnow.com.
Last week we heard from Dr. Lindsay Cockburn and we were discussing about cochlear implants; do they work, what are all the factors involved…And I thought it would be super, super interesting to bring Dr. Samantha McKinney in to hear her perspective on cochlear implants and to give us that unique perspective that she has.
Before I play you the interview, I do want to remind you to visit allaboutaudiology.com/hope to learn more about the Hope Beyond Hearing program, which is a consulting and support service that I offer to parents of children with hearing loss. You do not have to do this alone! There is support and information and resources out there. Lots of things like this podcast and so many wonderful people putting out information on blogs. My program is something unique, in that it really integrates between the audiology information and your own mental health, your own ability to cope with the difficulty of the news of a diagnosis. And so that’s something that I’m really very passionate about, that if you are struggling, if this is something that’s really bigger than you, I do want to offer my support and my services to you. So you can visit allaboutaudiology.com/hope to learn more.
Right now, we’re going to listen and learn about Dr. Samantha.
LS: “I’m so excited to have you here on the All About Audiology podcast. This is Dr. Samantha McKinney from northern California. The reason I’m so excited to be speaking with you is because: Number one, I love following you on Instagram, and learning so much from your blog posts and from all of the things that you share. [Number two], you have a very unique perspective as both an audiologist, and as a patient. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and anything you want to tell us?”
Dr. M: “Thank you for having me on here. I’m excited just to talk with you today. I guess that you just kind of told my story a little bit. So I was not identified with hearing loss until just over a year old. I guess my mom was a little suspicious that I wasn’t responding and not talking. So she went to the pediatrician and they said, ‘Oh no, she’s fine. Big sister’s talking for her.’ So she thought, ‘Okay, we’ll just keep going.’ She still had her suspicions. She said that there was one time that my back was turned to her and she was calling my name, and got closer and closer and got right behind me and said, ‘Samantha!’ I freaked out because I had just seen her and didn’t realize that she was right behind me. So she knew,
