“I didn’t know what to do,” cochlear implant user Yat Li said. “I want to be myself, I want to take off the mask.” Yat is an independent adult with a decent job – a marker of successful outcomes for a Cochlear Bone Conduction Implant System. But he had remained unfulfilled, especially with the mask he had been putting on for years. It was not until 2018 that he took off the mask.
Yat Was Born With Microtia and Profound Deafness
Yat, a 30-year-old Canadian, was born with microtia that comes with profound hearing loss in both ears. Microtia is a congenital deformity in which the external ear is underdeveloped. It is a condition affecting 1 in 10,000 people. The severity of microtia ranges from Type 1 to Type 4 where Type 4 is the most severe – all external ear structures are missing. Yat had been fitted with traditional over-the-head hearing aids until he was 12 when he got implanted in his right ear.
He Has to Wear Prosthetic Ears
Apart from putting on the behind-the-ear speech processor every CI recipient wears, Yat had to put on prosthetic ears so that he would not attract unsolicited attention to his tiny ears. He would spend 45 minutes affixing a pair of disproportionately large prosthetic ears with adhesive each day. The prosthetic ears refrained Yat from sports activities or being in the swimming pool lest the prosthetic ears drop off. It was not until 2011 that he underwent surgery to affix prosthetic ears to his face with screws that he has ears that look more proportionally sized and allow him to be more physically active.
It Crushed His Self-Esteem When He Was Younger
Teenage years were especially harsh on him. As an immigrant from Hong Kong who moved to Canada when he was 5, Yat was a minority on multiple fronts. At school, he was a racial minority, a non-native English speaker, a microtia bearer, and a person with hearing loss. Furthermore, he was surrounded by hearing people as he had been in mainstream schools throughout his education journey. He started feeling self-conscious and ashamed of his differences in middle school. He would shun his peers and secluded himself up.
Meeting With CHHA Was A Turning Point
It had been a lonely journey until 2018 when he came to know a support group – Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA) British Columbia Youth Peer Support Program. He felt welcomed – a refreshing experience for him – and was inspired to take off the mask and be himself. He decided to stop hiding from who he is and stand up to what he had been avoiding – speaking out about his hearing loss and microtia.
He Wants to Normalise Conversations About Hearing Loss
He started Acoustic Wear in June 2018. Its aim to make it fun to talk about hearing loss and in turn, remove the stigma surrounding hearing loss. Shortly after that, he was offered an opportunity to work at Wavefront Centre for Communication Accessibility, a British Columbia-based registered charity whose work revolves around providing access and inclusion for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Wavefront Centre serves over 14,000 Deaf and Hard of Hearing clients per year by delivering innovative services to achieve full communication accessibility. He jumped at the opportunity and quit his previous job as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Manager with a hospitality group.
His Biggest Lesson Is to Be Himself
Looking back, the perceived risk of being ostracized led Yat to socially self-quarantine. However, it did not turn out any better. Yat became an enigma and was often misunderstood by his peers. “Be yourself,” Yat said when asked what advice he would give to his younger self. “It’s okay to fail, the most important thing is being yourself.”
Being involved in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community gave Yat a new lease of life. He hopes that more CI users can join him in being part of a support group to help more people reap the benefits of hearing solutions. “It can be very isolating living with hearing loss.”
Yat and friends in Acoustic Wear shirts
You could find more cochlear implant user stories here.
CI Project collects cochlear implant user stories. I’d like to invite you to join the private Facebook group. You’ll receive an update of each new story (about once a month) and will get to interact with the characters of each story there. I’m also looking for more cochlear implant user stories. I’d appreciate it if you could nominate a cochlear implant user (including yourself) for me to write a story about!
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