In this episode I’m talking to the wonderful Hazel McKinnon. We talk about the challenged of becoming deaf at a young age, and how she is striving to raise awareness of deaf issues.

Hazel writes:

I’m Hazel and I’m currently on a journey which I want to share with as many people as possible about the challenges which I face on a daily basis which bring me hope in supporting hard of hearing and deaf individuals to feel they are part of the community by giving them a voice By  raising awareness

My journey began when I was a child around seven or eight I was continuously getting recording ear infections which are also known as chronic otitis  media which is an inflammation of the middle ear. I also had a buildup of fluid. Which caused my eardrums to burst, this  had caused increasing pain and nothing could cure that pain of earache. Doctors from what I remember gave me every single type of eardrops that they possibly could think of they then tried surgical methods including Grommets, this involves a small tube being placed into the eardrums which the hope is that it will relieve the pressure and reduce the ear infections. The grommets didn’t work the ear infections continued, but I also started to lose Hope.  I started to withdraw, hold back. I lost trust in myself. I struggle to find and be able to express who I was anymore with both friends and family this had a knock on effect, with school I fell behind. I stopped doing as well as I could’ve. I didn’t push myself as much. I didn’t want to be seen. 

When I was about eight, I finally got some hope a breakthrough with the doctors and medical team that I might have an opportunity my hearing had deteriorated and reduced so much that I was now struggling to hear and now I was needing hearing aids to help.

Was this the chance for me to make something of myself? 

Adapting to hearing aids was challenging and it did have its difficulties. A lot of people still didn’t recognise that from the outside you look stereotypically normal or what’s perceived as normal, but without this you feel lost. You feel like a different person. It’s as if you take your ears off it’s as if you shut off the part of your world that silence that you feel the feeling that you’re missing that rush of chaos round about you you can’t hear the hustle and bustle of the traffic of kids screaming roundabout you every day noises that you want to hear I remember the very first day picking up my hearing aids and walking out of the hospital and I remember plane going over the hospital and I remember I had to pull my hearing aids out of my ears because I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what the noise was but at the same time once I figured out what it was I was so hopeful and grateful that I could hear the plane and that I was able to be able to recognise that this devices were being able to support me to live and to experience the joy and magic of life again. 

To this day I have had the hope of holding down a career as a support worker for people with learning disabilities and I’ve now gone back to university to study a degree in nursing. I want to continue to promote and advocate that there is Hope out there for individuals who have hearing loss of are deaf to reach there goals and that there really is no limits. 

Being a deaf individual in a hearing world is hard but if you have a dream and an vision reach for your dreams.