CBS-19 Blog of the Week: Sara’s Era

Posted on July 21, 2009 by marijean

saraThis week I featured the blog of Sara Gould, Sara’s Era – the Era of Sara as the WCAV CBS-19 Blog of the Week.

I know Sara; she’s a friend who I met through blogging. You may know her as one of the judges of the C’ville Pie Down. You may know her as @sajego on Twitter. What you may not have known about Sara, is that she lost her hearing at the age of 14. On her blog, Sara’s been sharing the stories of what it is like to regain her hearing, as the result of a cochlear implant she received several months ago.

My interview with Sara appears below, and the video from tonight’s broadcast is here.

How has blogging about the decision to get your cochlear implant been beneficial?

I didn’t start blogging about getting a cochlear implant until I had already made my decision.  I’d known I was a candidate for almost two years before deciding.  I actually got most of my information about  from bloggers, so when I started my own journey blogging about it made sense.  It gives me a record for myself but also lets me share and help others going through the process themselves.  Each person’s experience is so different.

Have you met others with hearing loss, found support from the deaf community, or not?

Cochlear implants have been controversial in the culturally-Deaf community since their FDA approval back in the 1980s.  Since I lost my hearing when I was 14 and even now still haven’t learned sign language very well I don’t really think of myself as part of the Deaf Culture, though I do have some friends who are culturally Deaf.  One of my good friends who is Deaf actually got her cochlear implant before I did.  I haven’t met many people in person or locally, but the online community of cochlear implant patients has been very supportive.

I admire you for sharing your stories of regaining your hearing — how has your audience reacted? Do you have friends and family who just want to find out what it’s like, and what you’re going through?

Initially I had to keep myself in check whenever anyone told me how AMAZING the cochlear implant was.  That wasn’t how I felt about it at all, things sounded very strange and I don’t think I did very well capturing in words everything I was hearing that first few weeks.  People sounded like robots, everything sounded like it was right out of a sci-fi movie.  I hadn’t been completely deaf before, so all this gibberish sound didn’t seem Amazing to me at all… but thanks to all the other blogs I had read I expected this chaos and I knew it would take time to adjust going into it.

My mom and grandmother read everything I write.  My dad doesn’t use the computer, so he can’t wait until I can call him on the phone.

What do you hope to achieve by blogging, not just about your journey to improved hearing, but in general?

Believe it or not, I’ve been blogging for almost 10 years now.  I started with a travel log for a summer road trip on livejournal.com back before it was even called blogging.  I find that for me it’s easier to write for an audience I you have a specific topic, but my favorite style of blogged still tends to be personal. My cochlear implant experience has filled that requirement pretty well.

There are 180,000 people with cochlear implants in the world now.  Of those in the US, more than half are children.  Everyone’s experience is different and I know I enjoy reading other blogs so hopefully some of them are finding mine a good read too.

Finally, as a musician, I’m fascinated by your gradual and new experiences — what’s been your favorite part, or new sound? The worst?

I think my hardest moment was the last concert my band played the week before my surgery.  We sounded good.  I had heard things with two hearing aids for half my life at that point and I was almost mourning giving that experience up.   It’s well-documented that most people with a cochlear implant hear speech very well when given enough time and practice.  Music on the other hand is still being figured out.  I’ve read a lot more articles about how music Doesn’t sound good with a cochlear implant than the opposite.  So I’ve been glad that my personal experience contradicts that.  Music doesn’t sound like it did before, but it still sounds like musical.  And it’s still improving too.

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About marijean

I'm a public relations professional, social media consultant and work-at-home-mom living and working in Charlottesville, Va. I'm Marijean Jaggers and this is my blog.
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