I’m totally deaf. Have been since I was 5 years old. Been asked to write about how ICAN to show deaf and HOH people there is life as a deaf person. So …..Where do I start?
Well my very first job when I left school way back in the 20th century was as a Laboratory Assistant at Glaxo. There I was introduced to the very beginnings of programming computers to analyse signals coming from instruments that were designed to show how much active ingredients there were in medicines. So interesting, no-one treated me different because I was deaf, I was just left to get on with it.
Given the opportunity to go to college to get higher qualifications in applied chemistry, I jumped at the chance. Here I met the course tutor, who turned out to be none other than Dr Kilcoyne who later went on to become the star of Brainiac (science abuse). Ahh – these chemists are always having fun blowing things up with what seem to be inert materials! At college I never had communication support, it just was unheard of in those days before the DDA. So Dr Kilcoyne made sure I had 1:1 catch up tutorials with him, such a lovely, lovely man. He got me through the qualification and I got my promotion from it.
So ICAN …. when you meet someone who believes in you.
Much later on though I discovered all the people who had started with me were getting promoted further and yet I wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t my lack of scientific knowledge or skills, it was because the higher up you go the more meetings you need to keep the team running smoothly. I couldn’t follow in those meetings you see.
ICAN…. I discovered lipspeakers and Access to Work – so applied and got an allowance to use a lipspeaker every week for the team meetings. After a few years I went back to my manager and asked why I wasn’t getting promoted. “You can’t because you’re deaf, Suzie. Sometimes these meetings need to be within 10 minutes notice, so it’s not possible”
ICAN – I thought ahh – well I’ll see if I can try again for a cochlear Implant (this was in 1996). I’d already been down for tests in the 1980’s and been told I’d never be able to have one because I had an ossified cochlea. So I met Mr Hawthorne. Mr Hawthorne was working on a brand new prototype of CI called “Squid”. This one was not traditional loop round the cochlea style, it was drilling into the bone and putting 3 arrays of 4 electrodes into the holes in hope that some of those electrodes would hit a nerve (so to speak!). It worked (well it gives sound, but not sound like you would recognise).
Going back to work – oh the noise! Glassware always clinking in the lab, I never really got to grips with it. BUT my colleagues were excited, “Wow Suzie, you’re normal now, what’s it like?” How do you describe it? How do you feel? Well me, while excited, I found it depressing because I was normal before, so what’s changed? Never thought of myself as anything other than normal. So…
ICAN – I decided to go and work part time simply because the noise was too much and the spare days I had I went back to college and trained to become a teacher. This time I had communication support, it was wonderful, I focused on teaching deaf awareness, communication tactics and disability awareness and achieved my Certificate of Education.
So now I had 2 careers going at the same time, one had to go but which one?
….. to be continued…..
Suzie Jones | Twitter | Pardon on Twitter & Facebook
#ICAN on Twitter @121captions
If you’d like to be a role model for younger deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people, all you have to do is write up to 500 words on how you got to where you are today. You’re welcome to email us at bookings@121captions.com for direction or contact us on Twitter or Facebook.
The post #ICAN : Suzie Jones appeared first on 121 Captions.