L.E.
Green Lights
On the left is my dry store, which is where I put my processors at night to remove all moisture, in the middle is my battery charger, and then on the right is my vibrating, flashing fire alarm, and they all have a green light, which is quite satisfying. That's my technology associated with having cochlear implants.
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The obstacle is, I can't hear a fire alarm at night, and we actually had a fire recently in my house where I was woken up by my housemates. That was a challenge, because I'd been living the year without a fire alarm. I'd had housemates, so I was safe, but it's not the same; you're not independently living. I now have a fire alarm; I now have that independence. This photo shows technology helping me become independent. But before technology, I hadn't really been able to be independent because of my deafness.
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It's just a faff to have stuff like that. So it's having to think about questions like "Where do I put the smoke alarms on the ceiling" and "Where do I put the vibrating pad?" Because the slats on my bed frame were too wide, I had to put another thing underneath the bed. So it's all the small things that I don't think people really realise with being deaf, having cochlear implants, and the amount of technology that goes with it.
Nature Walks
Walks for me are a time to reset or process thoughts and I take a few photos whenever I walk along the canals. This was one of my favourite photos, because it was a walk where I felt really peaceful. And generally I'll walk along in silence or listen to some music, which is pretty cool that I can listen to music because I've got Bluetooth straight into my ears (cochlear implants).
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It's quite modern progress, I've always had to use a microphone that plugs into the phone and it's really bulky to carry around. It's not as easy as AirPods or anything like that. So it's been quite cool to get an iPhone and be able to have that going straight to my ears, and I could just press play and just be listening to something. People don't even know it a lot of the time. So I think that's been nice to be able to listen to music in a similar way that other people can.
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When I walk, I either like to listen to the birds and the wind in the trees, or I'll listen to music and enjoy the fact I can listen to music. It always makes me reflect on wow, I can hear stuff, which is quite cool. I can hear and that's not something I would have been able to do if I didn't have cochlear implants.Â
Lab Work
This is a photo of the lab I was working in this summer. I enjoyed chemistry and maths at A-level and went to do chemical engineering at university. So this lab placement was in the chemical engineering department at the university, and I was doing membrane emulsification with the machine on the right.
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I went to a mainstream primary school, went to a grammar school at secondary, and now I am at university and then had a placement for eight weeks in the summer in a lab. So this photo shows the journey behind doing things that I never thought I could do, let alone what other people think deaf people can or can’t do.
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My parents say quite a lot that being deaf made me quite determined, partially because I had a few extra responsibilities including batteries and just keeping them on my head, not losing them, and I then became just a bit more resilient.