“I love doing things that people think I can’t do, breaking the stereotype of ‘disability’ and showing people I have ‘different abilities’,” said Jamie.
Jamie’s family first discovered Hear and Say when they moved to Brisbane in 2003, searching for support for their daughter’s hearing loss. Jamie soon began specialised speech therapy, known as auditory-verbal therapy, two days per week to help her learn to hear, listen and speak with the use of the cochlear implant she received when she was one year old.
Technology has come a long way even since the early 2000s, and Jamie said she loved the Bluetooth streaming feature now available through her current cochlear implant processor.
“This capability means I can Bluetooth phone calls and music directly to my implant. I love talking on the phone with my friends now, whereas before I would always send messages because it was so hard to hear and understand,” said Jamie.
