Cochlear implant patients often experience a divide between the hearing community and the Deaf community. For some, it takes time to develop a strong voice when it comes to letting others know about our hearing needs – which can sometimes impair us from being the best that we can be. Cochlear implant user Karina Cotran fully understands that from her first-hand experience.
Karina Wrote A Book About Her Experience Living With CI
Karina is a unilateral CI recipient living in Toronto, Canada. She is currently a Senior Communications Coordinator at the largest Canadian food retailer, Loblaw Companies Limited. She is also an advocate for hearing loss communities who has published a book and runs a blog to share her experiences as a CI recipient. It was a writing assignment in university set her off to a journey of self-advocacy and advocating for the hearing loss communities, she shared in an interview over a video call.
She Was Implanted at Age 7
Born with moderate hearing loss, Karina was fitted with hearing aids at age three. When she was 7, she was diagnosed profoundly deaf and was implanted in her left ear. She progressed well and had attended mainstream schools from primary school to university. She excelled in her classes despite her hearing limitations and made a group of close friends. Nevertheless, she did experience some teasing about her hearing loss, and also was shy in talking about it with other people. The turning point came when she was attending University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM).
Her Professor Encouraged Her to Write A Book
As a Professional Writing and Communication student at UTM, Karina was encouraged to write her personal stories. She wrote about her hearing loss. Her work got the attention of her professor, who encouraged her to write more. She did.
She wound up writing seventeen creative, non-fiction short stories on the book – Hearing Differently: Growing Up With a Cochlear implant – which was published in June 2017, during her last year in university. Writing the book helped her completely come to terms with her hearing loss and realize her aspiration to become an active voice in the deaf and hard of hearing community. It was also a dream-come-true experience for Karina as it is the kind of book that she wished she had had growing up.
Advocating For Herself at Workplace
Karina is currently a Senior Communications Coordinator at Loblaw Companies Limited. While she is grateful for accommodation provided by her employer, she has her share of struggles (and ways to work around them).
Conference calls are one of the biggest challenges. It would have been easy to feel embarrassed in such professional settings. Not Karina. She stands up and is upfront about her hearing needs to her manager and colleagues. She even detailed her ways of working around such incidents for fellow CI recipients on her blog – Hearing Differently. The biggest CI-related obstacle is not the absence of solutions but how to mobilise the people around them, which takes an initiative from CI recipients.
“CI recipients can hear conversations, music and noise, just differently”, Karina said.
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!