Carrie and the KC Gang (More Blogs)

The young adults at Rock Bottom Brewery Friday night.
We hopped off the bus after Comedy Sportz and went to an Irish pub Saturday night. I normally don't do such things and felt like collapsing after two nights of about 4.5 hours of sleep each, but hey, when in Milwaukee... (and hanging out with such great people, too)

For the next few young adult stories I have links to other blogs. Young adults are very active in the Kansas City Chapter. I link to their blog here so that you can read the experiences of Sarah Mosher, Victor Prechtel, Kelly Rogel and Dennis Selznik, who have all posted (or will be posting shortly) their unique perspectives on the convention.

Another awesome person I met at the convention was twenty year old Carrie Martin of Tennessee. She is interested in audiology and was definitely inspired at the convention. You should check out Carrie’s blog, which she started specifically so she could share her experiences at the convention. Her introductory blog explains who she is much better than I can.

It was so great to meet so many cool people who understand what other hard of hearing people are going through. It was awesome to be able to hang out at a bar with a group of people (something I might avoid altogether under normal conditions) and not feel totally out of the loop. What’s really great is that even though we all come from different parts of the country, we can still keep in touch online via facebook, hearing loss nation and our own personal blogs.

HLAA really encourages young adults to get involved at the local, state and national levels. The association tries its hardest each year to get sponsors for young adult scholarships, so if you are a young adult and have never been to a convention, remember to apply for a scholarship in 2011! Many of us have received scholarships over the past couple of years, and you can too! Just visit the convention page in early 2011 and apply by the end of March. Come to the convention in D.C. I promise you will make so many new friends and have such a great time, even if you don't get a scholarship, it's worth the money. Please join us!

Viral's Story

The first young adult I’d like to introduce to you is Viral Tejani. Viral is a leader in the HLAA D.C. chapter. This was his first convention and he was very much inspired, as the theme for the convention suggests. Like many of the young adults who attended, Viral was honored with a scholarship to the convention. He needs little other introduction as he has done such a wonderful job telling the world who he is through his blog. He originally posted his blog on the social networking site Hearing Loss Nation. I realize not everyone has an HLN account, so I have gotten permission to reproduce it here. Enjoy!


I never knew what I was missing....a perspective from a HLAA 2010 convention attendee...

I’ve never really been much for blogging, and never really exposed my private life on the internet, because it wouldn’t be so private. But, this is an exception, as this is an experience I want to share with everyone.

This really started out as a reflection of my first time at the HLAA convention, but eventually turned into a stream of consciousness prose where I discussed random hearing loss related issues that have affected me.

Growing up in a hearing world, it never really bothered me much that I had a hearing loss. Part of the reason is that I was mainstreamed pretty quickly in elementary school, and thus never really interacted with the other HOH students. I felt “normal” in a sense, and the hearing loss never crossed my mind. The only difference I could see between me and all of the other classmates was just purely ethnic; I was Indian in a white-dominated school - and that seemed to be the difference people noticed more (but that’s a whole another story though). Being hearing impaired in an all-hearing school didn’t strike me too odd. Putting on the HA’s seemed so routine and second-hand.


The only times where the hearing loss annoyed me was when I attended family / social gatherings where a lot of Indians were involved. Many of them would speak in our native language, and it was annoying that I couldn’t really follow conversations except for a few words here and there. I once asked my dad why he and my mom didn’t speak to me in both our native language and in English so that I would be bilingual. His reply: when I was identified (at age 2), the audiologist recommended that my parents speak English only, since I would be living in the U.S. It was so frustrating to hear that explanation, but who knows what would’ve happened if they tried to raise a hearing impaired child bilingual. Would it have worked, or would it have failed? Who knows?


Other than the family gatherings, I never got frustrated with having a hearing loss until college. I guess the stress of being an engineering major, as well as all the other extracurricular activities, sometimes got to me. Sometimes, I would wake up in the morning so damned tired that I didn’t want to wear the HAs, but really didn’t have a choice in the matter if I wanted to participate/fall asleep in class or chill with my friends or whatever. Looking back, the other issue was that I was starting to learn how to be on my own, and
I had to pay attention to caring for my health, including caring for the HAs.


Regardless, even though college was a great experience, the stress sometimes got to me, like it does to everyone. One goes though periods where little things start being very annoying. Sometimes, the hearing loss would be a topic I would ruminate over, and I would mainly think to myself, “This really isn’t fair. I did nothing to deserve this.” Even though I knew there was no point in complaining about it – it’s not like I’ll magically get cured (until hair cell regeneration actually works) – I still decided to complain. After some time, I would totally forget about it. After all, you really can’t spend your days complaining about circumstances you don’t have control over. I was still happy that I had some solid friends at Lehigh and at home. I was still happy that I was actually doing decent with the engineering major, even though sometimes my social life got disrupted. I was still happy being involved with extracurricular activities. In short, I was still happy.


Even though I graduated with an engineering degree, I had always wanted to do clinical work. However, I also knew medicine wouldn’t be a good fit for me. Long story short, I decided to get into Audiology. It seemed to make sense – it was the only profession that I could truly empathize with patients, given my own personal experiences. Everything was going fine with the Audiology classes, but I did run into a few roadblocks when I started seeing patients – but that’s also another topic for another day. I’ve already shared some of those stories with some of you. The biggest surprise: when I initially started seeing patients, I would occasionally resent people with normal hearing or patients with decent residual hearing. I was surprised at this new feeling of bitterness, but at the same time, some of these patents seemed hesitant in owning up to their hearing loss. This lack of ownership is likely why I experienced some bitterness / resentment, and I shouldn’t be so surprised that I’m taking it personally. After all, I knew first hand how helpful HA’s can be, and I really wanted patients to realize that.


The other source of my resentment was the concept of newborn hearing screening using OAE measures. This wasn’t around when I was born. I started wondering, what would’ve happened if I got identified at birth instead of at age 2. How would have my future changed with earlier identification? Again, I was ruminating over things I had no control over. It’s not worth stressing over.


There was a point where the bitterness / resentment faded, and my supervisors and I just simply tried our best to help the patients. I’ve already had a few memorable patients who loved probing me about my hearing loss, and I loved sharing my experiences with them. On the flip side, I’ve also had a few patients who still were worried about the stigma, who still took it as another one of those signs of aging, and who had many other little excuses that really mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. The only excuse that I can completely understand is the financial commitment required, which unfortunately bars some patients from getting the services they need. Regardless, my supervisors and I just tried our best to help all the patients we could.


During my first semester of clinic, I heard about HLAA through the Walk4Hearing. University of Maryland’s Student Academy of Audiology had a team organized for the Fall 2009 walk. I thought, why not, it’s for a good cause. Shortly after that, I met Zac LaFratta, who was starting a HLAA chapter for Washington D.C. So, again, I thought, why not? I started getting involved, and am now VP. Zac was persuading me to go to the HLAA convention, and to be honest, I was a little hesitant. I didn’t know what to expect, and didn’t know how beneficial it would be. I had looked at it as a networking experience, and I thought it would be a good way to meet people. I’m grateful that Zac nominated me for a scholarship, as the experience was just amazing.


The first day of the convention was quite overwhelming. I had never been in the presence of so many hard of hearing people. Literally, an army of us was dominating the Frontier Airline Center. I glanced around….hearing aid on that guy, cochlear implant on that girl, oh that person has both an HA and a CI, oh there’s an FM system,….ahhh, holy crap, there’s so many of us!!


That first night at the convention, I met some of the young HOH adults, and we all went down to the hotel bar and chilled. And it was simply...cool. Here’s a bunch of us chilling together, talking about our experiences with hearing loss, but also about other random stuff like Game 5 of the NBA finals happening that night. And clearly, since there are 5-6 breweries in a 10 mile radius, we all had to head to the bars every night, chill, and try the local beers. But more importantly, we all were SO comfortable with one another. I noticed simple things like, if Person A missed a joke while everyone was laughing, Person B would explain to Person A what just happened, so no one would be left out. Wait a minute… no one left out?? Really?? HOW COOL IS THAT? Seriously, there was no such thing as bluffing here. (And I remember totally calling one of you out when I noticed you were bluffing….but I won’t mention your name :-P). I don’t understand ASL well, so I did bug some of you to translate for me. But I didn’t feel embarrassed. Why? Again, because, there’s no such thing as bluffing here. We all had serious conversations about hearing loss, but we were all also pretty chill and goofing around. I also would not have had any of these serious conversations with my normal hearing friends, and I never knew what I was missing out on by not having other HOH friends to talk to.


During the actual conference, I met a lot of good people, including presenters and officers from other HLAA chapters. It was interesting to see how other chapters, the HLAA administration, and general HLAA members really look to us young people as future leaders. As future leaders, we can promote advocacy and spread awareness about hearing loss. At the same time, I also met a few HLAA members who were very scared about hearing loss and being alone. That really inspired me as well; there’s no reason one should feel alone! We all should be good-natured members of society and look out for one another.


I came back from Milwaukee feeling inspired and focused. Meeting the HOH young adults, other fellow chapter officers, presenters, and other random attendees, was a great experience. The experience inspired ideas of what I needed to do as a HLA-DC officer and future audiologist. I need to do more than just diagnostics and treatment. I need to advocate for people. I need to help people advocate for themselves. Not just I. WE ALL need to promote awareness about the effects of hearing loss, and we all need to be stick together and be strong!

I really had a great time meeting and being inspired by all of you. I am grateful to Zac for the scholarship nomination. Since the convention is in D.C. next year, I really have no excuse to not to come. Hopefully, I will see some of you again.

We Were Inspired in Milwaukee!

It’s been about a month since the convention, but the connections made there are still going strong online and around the country. I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to some of the wonderful people I met at the convention. HLAA has been pushing an initiative to get young adults more involved at the local, state and national levels. The following few posts are proof that it’s working. We young adults are getting more involved. We are attending conventions, making personal connections, and assuring all HLAA members that we are ready to step up as emerging leaders in this organization. Many of the young adults who attended have been truly inspired. We all want to save up and go again next year to the convention in Washington D.C. I asked some of the friends I made at the convention if they had any thoughts about their experiences that they’d like to share with everyone. I now have a compilation of blog posts from about half a dozen young adults. I hope you enjoy everyone’s take on the convention as much as I did.

Sunday Wrap Up

The young adults, many of whom received scholarships, after the awards banquet

Sunday morning was the HLAA awards breakfast, sponsored by CapTel. The ceremony celebrated HLAA members from around the country who have gone above and beyond in their advocacy and outreach efforts. There were awards for best website and newsletter, special service awards and other awards for outstanding HLAA members. Scholarship recipients and Walk 4 Hearing (which had its own room and booth in the exhibit hall) leaders were also recognized.

Peg Adamucci (who was available to sign her book Grandmom and Me and the System) and her husband at the HLAA booth

After the awards ceremony my friends and I walked around to experience a bit of Milwaukee before we headed home. We searched around the city for a specific place that my friend heard had really good grilled cheese. Unfortunately, it was closed. So was the next restaurant we were sent to. At least we enjoyed the walk and we found a pretty good Italian place to stop and eat lunch at.

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to share the convention experience with you all. I’d like to thank Nancy Macklin for giving me this opportunity as well as planning this entire weekend-long shindig. She is simply amazing. I learned so much about new technologies available to help deaf and hard of hearing people experience life and communicate with the world. I also learned important ways in which I can be a powerful self-advocate and get the accommodations I need.

Thanks again to all of our sponsors. My personal thanks go out to CTIA: The Wireless Association and Starkey Labs for providing young adult scholarships, Hamilton Captel for sponsoring the blog and AT&T for sponsoring Comedy Sportz and the exhibit hall socials, at which I met amazing people. Our sincere gratitude also goes out to:

Cochlear Americas: Rumble at the Harley Davidson Museum

Advanced Bionics: Convention Workbook

Med-El: Badges and lanyards

Oticon: Registration bags

Sorenson Communications: Get acquainted party

T-Mobile: President & executive director’s reception

Verizon: Convention program and exhibit guide

R.I.T./NTID: Communication access for the research symposium

Blackberry RIM: Three morning coffee breaks

Hearing Industries Association: Hearing screening booth

Williams Sound: Signage

Saturday Shows and Shenanigans

Comedy Sportz show (picture courtesy Sarah Mosher)

Sarah is just one of the young adults I met who have written up a great description of their convention experiences on the Kansas City chapter blog .

Due to the young adult shenanigans the night prior I missed out on some morning activities. I went to lunch at the local mall with my friend Rhi and Sveta and while we were there we met another convention attendee, Joanne. She has a twenty-year-old daughter who has a hearing loss. Joanne told me how much she'd learned and experienced at the convention and that she wants to bring get her daughter to go next year. After eating lunch and talking to Joanne for a while, I attended a workshop.

The workshop which I did attend was on movie and theater accommodations. A lot of it I’d heard before. There are open captions, closed captions and rear window captions, though I’m not very familiar with the rear window type. Infrared and fm systems are sometimes used. Interpreting is also an option for live theater. There’s actually some cool captioning glasses some students at UCLA supposedly developed recently, which I think would be great, but I haven’t heard much about them or tried them out for myself. What was more interesting to me was the different accommodations mentioned by people from different areas of the country. I had recently seen some shows at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and was not impressed with the systems used. I guess that’s why HLAA pushes so much for individual self-advocacy so that everyone from any area can obtain the accommodations they need.

Soon after the workshop was an ice-cream social in the exhibit hall, No Ordinary Sundae, sponsored by AT&T. It was a great time to meet up with friends and enjoy delicious ice-cream. Unfortunately, I heard they ran out of ice-cream, but I was lucky enough to snag some and sit down to eat with my new friends.

After that was the Oktoberfest in June banquet. Milwaukee is known for its beer, cheese, motorcycles and German cultural food, all of which we got to experience over the course of the weekend, so the Oktoberfest theme fit well. Many of the young adults decided to skip this event in favor of Comedy Sportz, the off-site event for young adults. However, some of us popped into the Oktoberfest event first. There was some great food there including potatoes au gratin and a mushroom-stuffed, pastry-covered chicken dish. I personally saved a little room for the Comedy Sportz excursion, also sponsored by AT&T.

For those not familiar with Comedy Sportz, it’s an improv comedy show, similar to the television show Whose Line is it Anyway. The night was particularly entertaining for us as it was specially captioned for HLAA. Not only that, but the presence o the captionists added to the comedic effect as the host (or referee) made comments about the CART service as well as the ladies providing it. They did an excellent job. There were two ladies captioning, and apparently both of their names were Lisa, so the referee made a joke about that as well as how cool it was to see his words on the screen. It was an interesting night to say the least. I was surprised at the number of people who attended whom I’m certain were over the 18-35 age range. I was expecting a more intimate gathering. However, I think I remember reading somewhere that this event was “also open to the young at heart.”

When the buses headed for home, however, the true young adults decided to hop off the bus at Mo’s Irish Pub rather than return to the hotel. It was a long night. I got about 4 and a half hours of sleep before the awards banquet. It’s always interesting to try to communicate in a diverse group. This younger group was not as diverse in age as the Oktoberfest or Comedy Sportz crowds, but it was more intimate. Some spoke, some signed, and others read lips or used multiple means of communication. It was certainly a long and interesting night.