Welcome back to the All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein, and this is episode 32 (Sorry, I misspoke in the audio). It is the All About YOU episode! Every other episode, we talk about things that are timely in the news and things that are going on on Instagram and on Facebook, and your comments and responses to the previous episode.
So, if you didn’t hear the last episode with Mama Manon, it was such a beautiful episode all about connecting, and she shared really practical and useful tips and strategies for connecting with our children and seeing them as whole people. It really can apply to anyone and everyone and I’ve been sharing it for sure outside of my audiology network and you know, people who are following for the hearing related content, and I really urge you to do the same because it was just such a nice, wholesome loving episode. It was just delicious. You know, one of these things that you feel it’s like, yes, it just feels like the right and good thing to do. Anyway, so if you haven’t heard that, please go ahead and listen to that episode.
And today we’re talking about some of the responses to International Cochlear Implant day, which was just last week. And it was all over. It was all over Instagram, all over Facebook, people were sharing activation videos, people were sharing time lapses from when their kid first got the implant to how they’re doing now with the implant. People shared their experiences as adults. And so there was a lot of awareness, beautiful user photos and user stories. It was just a great day, you know, a lot of people bringing cochlear implants to the mainstream. It’s a relatively new technology in the grand scheme of things, you know, 25 to 30ish years that the cochlear implant has been out and it’s becoming more and more known and for someone who doesn’t have a direct connection with audiology, they might know about it.
For example, there’s representation in children’s clothing ads, like there’s a couple of photos from gap where the children who are modeling the clothes also are cochlear implant users. There was a character in Toy Story, one of the children in the Toy Story movie who has cochlear implants. And so, these are the kinds of images that get circulated in the Facebook groups for parents of children with cochlear implants and cochlear implant experience groups, that I just love to be in those places because it’s so great to be able to see something in culture and in media and feel represented. And that’s important across the board for lots of different identities. But I think specifically, you know, with Deaf identity and hearing loss and being a cochlear implant user, these identities also are becoming more recognized and more represented.
So, the post that I posted to Instagram @allaboutaudiology podcast which you should definitely go follow me over there was, “When was the first time you ever saw or heard of a cochlear implant?” I got a lot of responses from you guys, which is so fun. Thank you for leaving your comments. It’s so interesting to see what everybody’s journey with it is.
So, my first time seeing a cochlear implant was when I met my friend Toby. We were kids. She was a friend of a friend of mine who lived in my neighborhood. And when I met her, I had never heard of cochlear implants before....
