Cochlear Implant User Alex Bushby: The Epitome of CI Parents’ Hope

Cochlear implant user Alexandra (Alex) Bushby, a 25-year-old Canadian, is currently a PhD candidate in Biostatistics at the University of Toronto. She enjoys watching TV, playing computer games, baking and hanging out with friends during her free time. She’s been involved in gymnastics as part of her extracurricular activities at school. 

This short profile of Alex sums up the ‘normal’ life – the autonomy to live as one wishes without being deprived of dignity and economic independence – that many cochlear implant (CI) parents hope for their kids.

I interviewed Alex over a Zoom call to find out what might be the key to the CI parents’ hope. I learned that her family, especially her mother, played an instrumental role in grooming Alex to be the young woman she is today.

Her diagnosis of profound hearing loss came in soon after she turned 3. She was implanted in her right ear the same year. She was later implanted in her left ear at age 14 as part of a clinical study.

Alex described her experience growing up as being fairly decent. It helped that her mother was an occupational therapist. Her mother had to proactively find ways to support people with needs and to help them succeed as part of the occupation.

This helped set the tone of the family’s interactions around Alex’s cochlear implant when she was younger. Her family members were open about her CI. The people around were made comfortable to ask questions about it. Today, Alex wants all CI users to know that we shouldn’t be ashamed of our implants.

She lets up her hair to make her white CI speech processors visible. This helps others to have a sense of her hearing condition. She tries to sit next to someone who will help convey the conversations in a large-group setting. Whenever possible, she seeks one-to-one conversations. Like her occupational therapist mother, Alex has learnt to proactively find workarounds in her daily situations.

At school, she requested and received assistive services like the frequency modulation (FM) system, captioning and note-taking. She also tended to sit closer to the front of the class. So that she could hear her teachers or lecturers better. At the universities, she would make sure to connect with the Accessibility Office at the beginning of each term.

Alex aspires to work with data sets – either as a Biostatistician or a Data Scientist – as her career. She also looks forward to knowing and meeting more deaf and hard of hearing young adults. And be of support. “It makes me sad that some among us don’t feel as ‘successful’ with our CI experience as seen in the CI Project survey (CI User Experience survey),” Alex said.

Interviewer’s (Peng) note

Alex’s family and the culture she lives in have been especially influential in shaping her healthy outlook and social experience.

The real problem around hearing loss is how we (CI users and the people around us) see it, not the condition itself. While there could be complications or physical discomfort with using CI that impede one’s daily function, the majority of the constant worries around hearing loss are psychological. They often are related to being comfortable in our own skin (self-esteem), being accepted by people that matter to us (dignity & social experience) and being perceived as competent (economic independence).

Alex (second from left) and family

You could find more cochlear implant user stories here.

CI Project collects cochlear implant user stories. I’d like to invite you to join the private Facebook group. You’ll receive an update of each new story (about once a month) and will get to interact with the characters of each story there. I’m also looking for more cochlear implant user stories. I’d appreciate it if you could nominate a cochlear implant user (including yourself) for me to write a story about!