New school, new progress.

I started a new university for Fall 2014 and I am absolutely loving it. My experience with my new school has shown me the truly atrocious behavior exhibited by the old one. My previous school essentially left me fending for myself and I felt isolated during the orientation and educational settings. To make a long story short, my hopes dwindled and the last straw was when they told me I should read lips during a video phone call assignment. Reading lips on a screen is not sufficient nor identical to reading the lips off a computer screen. To hearing people who have never encountered other d/Deaf people, their "read their lips" may seem perfectly rational. But for me that was the proverbial straw. I shouldn't have been surprised my nursing school was a horrible experience. This is the same school whose deaf and HOH accommodations employee told me Deaf people cannot learn foreign languages because we can't hear it. There were other issues at the former school with unreliable accommodations, but that comment has been burned to memory and that employee was never reprimanded for that comment because she "didn't remember saying that. She must have misheard what I said." I had hoped the medical campus would have been proactive about accommodations but that was not the experience I had. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt that my teachers didn't deliberately put up roadblocks, but in the end, someone doesn't need to be malicious to make things difficult for others. From what information was given to me by other students during my time there is a HOH medical student who reads lips during lectures. Is that truly what that student wants, or are they unaware they could have real-time captioning provided for them? Who knows, maybe they just don't want their classmates wrongly singling them out as intellectually inferior. Just because someone didn't know the exact words you said doesn't mean they're incapable of understanding you.

In related news, I decided to wait until next summer to apply to veterinary schools. One of my main hurdles is being able to trust that other schools would provide the classroom lecture accommodations. At this point I believe my new school's veterinary college would do well based on how this semester has been proceeding and because they had a Deaf student years ago who used an ASL interpreter. The other hurdle I have is I am not a traditional student and I'm older, but I'm trying to remind myself that any career I have, I'm mostly likely going to be doing it until I'm 70 or older! So I'm not truly too old for vet school, I'll simply be the oldest student in my class.

What's New.

This entry covers (i)Nursing school, (ii)Veterinarian school, (iii)stethoscopes, (iv)audiobooks, (v)insurance and Cochlear Implant upgrade.

i. At the forefront of my decision to leave nursing: my school was not adhering to the accommodations I needed. I chose not to support them via future tuition or alumni donation. I don't doubt my professors may have been confused since I performed well in my classes,  but I was not receiving the high quality education I deserve. Having to work harder than everyone else from the school's failure to provide equal access is not acceptable to me. Numerous videos remained uncaptioned, other videos were captioned days and weeks after the rest of my classmates had access (and therefore they had more time to study), mandatory and daily group work was atrocious with 100+ students in a small room speaking loudly over one another, zero help in the clinical setting, and microaggression behaviors (about disability) exhibited by classmates and professors.
The above, however, is not the only reason why I left, but it was crucial. I would have loved to have been a nurse working with Deaf patients, but that's going to be something others will need to do. I will still have that opportunity but in a different healthcare setting. I'm seeking careers that will allow greater freedom for independence and will seriously pursue my other healthcare passion: Animals. 

ii. I intend to apply for Veterinarian school this summer. I will need to take the GRE and I have three pre-reqs to complete before Summer 2015. In the meantime I will pursue Animal Science related degree. I'm more confident and motivated to ensure a Veterinarian school will provide my accommodations versus trying again at another nursing school. I will not allow schools to bully me any further with empty promises of, "Be patient and we'll fix the issues" only for them to never resolve anything.

iii. During nursing school I was able to use an electronic stethoscope modified for Cochlear Implants and hearing aids. After several mapping appointments with my audiologist, it still wasn't quite what I wanted for noisy environments. There is another stethoscope available. I would describe this one as a tool that translates sounds into images, though you can still listen at the same time. I'd very much like to try it out.

iv. Brief update on audiobooks is I have been listening to audiobooks while following along with the written books, though I cannot say any new changed have been noticed in the months since starting. I still require lip-reading skills to converse with others, and audiobooks are just as annoying to listen to as ever.

v. In the meantime, I'm trying to come up with a way to afford upgrading my Cochlear Implant from the Nucleus Freedom (Model made in 2005) to the Nucleus 6. Supposedly there are insurance plans out there that will cover an upgrade to the external C.I. processor if it has been over 5 years, but my health insurance through BlueCross BlueShield is NOT one of them  (pdf link explaining coverage).
By trading in my Nucleus Freedom, I would be given a $2,000 credit putting my final cost for an upgrade at over $7,000. If I order a second processor within 90 days, the second one would "only" cost 4 grand. I'm not certain how long this $2,000 trade-in credit will be accepted. I imagine at some point they'll take this offer down, putting the price for an upgrade to $9,000 plus additional accessories and batteries.

My Nucleus Freedom is currently functioning, it's just not technologically capable of giving me the results that hearing people would consider a successful surgery. Think of the improvements made to computers and cell phones alone since 2005. A lot has changed since then, and so have Cochlear Implant processors. I believe an upgrade would drastically improve my audio training, but how I'll be able to afford a $7,000+ upgrade is a question I haven't yet answered. I can either put it all on credit cards, or wait 3-5 years until the next upgrade. My current processor does not give me what I need, but it technically "works." I don't know, the ability to hear sounds seems pretty useless if you're not able to understand them as well. It's like walking around and listening to the rest of the world speak a foreign language. It's only gibberish (until I read lips).