My name is Callum Fox. I intend to write about my experiences as a cochlear implant user and what life has been like over the 17 years since I was first implanted in 1995.
I was born on July 14, 1990 in Bishop Auckland General Hospital in County Durham, and was soon discovered to be profoundly deaf due to a extremely rare and as of yet unexplained genetic disorder inherited through my Mum’s family. My parents took the decision to have me implanted and before I say anything else, I thank them wholeheartedly for this decision.
I went under the knife at the age of five, and was subsequently implanted at James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough. My primary schooling was spent at Northern Counties School For The Deaf, based in Jesmond, and Monkhouse Primary School in North Shields, which also had a specialist Deaf Unit.
Photo: The hospital where I was implanted.
In Year 5, my parents decided to send me to a local primary school to help me adapt to mainstream schooling for my secondary years, helping me to make friends in the local area. So I went to St. Wilfreds, a Roman Catholic primary school before going to St. Johns for my secondary education and as it turns out, for my sixth form years as well.
I used to use British Sign Language (BSL) as my main means of communication in my primary school years before switching fully to spoken English as I integrated into mainstream schooling.
These days, I have just graduated from Teesside University with a Masters in Journalism, as well as being an NCTJ qualified journalist. I’m currently freelancing as a writer/journalist, specialising in sport although I’ve recently taken the decision to write about my experiences as a cochlear implant user on this blog, making use of the skills I’ve gained so far.
I’m in a fairly unique position. I’m one of the oldest cochlear implant users in the United Kingdom implanted at such an early age in the first half of the 1990s, so I feel that I need to at least put pen to paper regarding my thoughts. It’s also an attempt at a bit of catharsis, to find out a bit more about myself and what I truly think about being a cochlear implant user in a hearing world.
It’s also an attempt to immerse myself into the deaf community. I’ve never really had much time to actually participate in this area of life, as I was satisfied with my social life up to now. I never really had contact with fellow deaf people since I left Monkhouse. Life was too hectic, I went to school, I played with my friends. I didn’t really want to complicate my life, leaflets sent to my house advertising activities for deaf people were a nuisance really. I was simply too busy.
Out of sight, out of mind and all that. But now that I’ve finished university and looking for jobs, life has slowed down. I’ve had time to reflect on my situation. I want to change my relative ignorance of the deaf community, and I hope that by establishing a presence on here and on Twitter, I can reach out and engage with people.
Walking the dividing line.
To sum up, I owe everything I am now, including writing this very article for this blog, to the decision my Mum and Dad made for me to undergo the operation all those years ago and I wouldn’t change that decision now.
You’ll notice that I use the phrase ‘cochlear implant user’ a lot during this piece, I think it reflects my position at the minute. I have no contact with the deaf community and the people I grew up with in the Deaf Units have long since drifted away. I don’t consider myself as part of the deaf community even if I am deaf. But I don’t consider myself part of the hearing world either.
So I’m between worlds, a foot in both camps so to speak. I’m walking the line between the hearing world and the deaf world. Hence the title of my blog, Walking The Divide.
This article was first published on Callum’s blog here: http://walkthedivide.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/an-introduction-to-walking-the-divide/
Callum Fox is walking the divide between the hearing and deaf worlds. Profoundly deaf since birth and CI user. In his spare time he balances being 22 years old, being a football fanatic and trying to make it as a writer, journalist and human being. Follow him on Twitter as @WalkTheDivide
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Andy
January 17, 2013
Wow! A Masters in Journalism! I’m deeply impressed, well done!
I was always good at writing when I was at school and I won a few prizes for essays and that sort of thing. Strangely the school chose to ignore my obvious talent for English and instead pushed me in the direction of science. I have no idea why and it never occurred to me to be a writer.
Many years later, jobless and skint I started writing for a shooting magazine using my mum’s Smith portable. They seemed to like what I wrote and more to the point they paid me for it and that is how I went freelance. My main ambition at the time was to be a photographer, I specialised in action pictures but I also discovered that there was a market for self illustrated articles and so I went down that road.
I had a lot of fun and a lot of frustration, because the competition was fierce and as a Deaf person I didn’t have the networking skills needed to keep in touch with all the editors. This is a vital part of freelancing and although I was selling my work on merit I couldn’t make any lasting connections. It was a big handicap.
Eventually I got wiped out in the big transformation in the industry in the late 1980’s. The freelance world totally changed because so many publications cut their budget to zero, meaning we all had to go off and do something else. It was a tragic loss as I was just building up the business, I did it for 12 years but it all stopped in about 18 months and I never went back. Instead I went to the Open University and did a degree in computing and IT, using the then new-fangled Internet. Now I do most of my writing on the Internet, mostly for free!
I had a CI a couple of years ago because my hearing went to near zero and life was getting to be very hard work. I don’t live in a Deaf community and so I was forced to find a way to deal with the hearing world. The logical thing was to hear better and so I am glad I went for a CI because that’s exactly what happened. I just wish I had had mine done 17 years ago, maybe I would have been able to keep going as a writer photographer.
Thanks for sharing your story and I send you mine just to show that it is possible to get along even with a severe hearing loss, it’s just very hard work and very precarious.
Best wishes
Andy
Callum Fox (@WalkTheDivide)
January 17, 2013
Thanks for reading! Funnily enough I had the same problem at school, only that I never really recognised that I had a talent for writing. Ended up doing Criminology at university which I hated, so I went on to do the Masters in Journalism after a offhand comment from a lecturer that I was pretty good at writing. I’ve no illusions about getting into the media industry, it’s going to be tough and as you say it can be frustrating. Thanks for sharing your experiences too!
Andy
January 17, 2013
That lad will go far.
Andy
January 17, 2013
The big Deaf event this year will be the Deaflympics. There should be plenty of scope for creative journalism out of that and I am sure they need the publicity!
Robert Mandara
January 21, 2013
A great article but the title “Walking the LINE…” gives the impression that there’s a narrow boundary (like the ridge of a mountain) between Deaf and Hearing, with just a few poor souls struggling along it. In practice, there are far more of us in the “between” area than in the firmly Deaf camp. For that reason, I’d prefer to think that us deaf in-betweeners are wandering across a wide plateau rather than along a narrow line.
Editor
January 21, 2013
That’s a great point. Is the ‘line’ actually a three lane motorway, bordered by two footpaths? 🙂 (I’m only half joking here)
Andy
January 21, 2013
As near as I can make out, there are 6 million people in this country with a hearing impairment of some kind. That’s the Audit Bureau figure as far as I know. By far the majority of those are HoH or with a mild degree of hearing loss/tinnitus.
Out of the remainder, the BDA has agreed that about 150,000 people rely on sign (not necessarily BSL) to get through the day. This leaves a couple of million estimated who have a severe or profound loss but who do not rely on sign. They may be able to sign but they do not rely on it.
In the past there has been a history of assisting signers and pretty much ignoring everyone else. The result of that being that support for lipreaders is almost non existent.
Editor
January 21, 2013
Absolutely. The only problem I have is I sometimes see people on Facebook saying things like ‘they should stop focusing on sign language, and focus on what we need.’
The truth is we need a bit of everything – BSL, captioning, speech-to-text, lipreaders/lipspeakers and so on, so that everyone can have the type of access that suits them. It’s not one size fits all, as you say –
Andy
January 21, 2013
The fact is that over the years the only people who have made a fuss over support is the signers. There has not been a campaign by lipreaders for more support. It has always been the sign contingent who have spoken up because obviously they have a vested interest in looking after their way of life. There is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that the Press have latched on to the Deaf People/ Signalnguage connection and have somehow converyed the impression that all deaf people sign. It’s very common for people to say “Are you deaf? Do you sign?” and occasionally start waving their hands about.
For that reason I have always deplored the way that sign language regularly gets an airing in the Press as being a characteristic of deaf people, while lipreading gets no mention at all.
Many hearing people have no idea of what lipreading is or what it can or can’t do. This is my personal experience. They are just not informed. This is not the same thing as being against sign or anti Deaf culture! It’s about the non-provision of an important means of support due to people not being fully informed.
Editor
January 21, 2013
You’re right that signing is often linked to deafness, but so is people speaking more loudly, and shouting, or speaking with massively obvious lip patterns, when they find out someone’s deaf. That’s what people who sign (and everyone else who is deaf of course) often have to put up with!
All I’m saying is that both sides have issues they have to confront on a daily basis. It’s not as if it’s easy for signers compared to other deaf people. Completely agree with you that all elements of support should be offered and generally, much more needs to be done to make society deaf aware.
Andy
January 21, 2013
In the dark, we are all equally disabled. Cut off. This is not taken into account in the hearing world. In the recent release of information about the requirements for PIP it mentions that BSL users will get extra consideration.
Why do they think that signers should get extra consideration over other deaf people when signers themselves admit that lipreading is too hard for them?