466,000,000 people in the world are deaf, and Lupita De Anda is part of that population.
There are different types of hearing impairments. There is hard of hearing, which is a condition where the person is not fully deaf but has hearing loss and may need a hearing device.
There are also people who are fully deaf and are not able to hear at all. With the help of surgery, doctors can put a cochlear implant inside the head, which can help them hear again.
Lupita De Anda is a freshman who has a hearing impairment. De Anda was born without the ability to hear.
De Anda is fully deaf, which means that without her hearing aids, she is not able to hear anything. “I got my first cochlear implant in my right ear, and I was three years old. And when I was around four or five years old, I got my second cochlear implant, which was in my left ear,” said De Anda. Many children start hearing sounds right after they are born, and that is how they start talking faster.
In the case of De Anda, she was not able to hear anything until the age of three. This caused her to struggle in learning things like how to speak and becoming more familiar with sounds.
De Anda’s first language was sign language. “My mom started to teach me sign language from a very young age so I would become more familiar with it,” said De Anda. Starting school, De Anda was given the help of an interpreter.
She became more familiar with different signs and how to sign more fluently. De Anda has had a couple of different interpreters throughout her school years. “I think my first interpreter was Ms.Vicky, then Mr. Erick, then Ms. Reyes, and now I have Ms. Peggy again this year,” said De Anda.
De Anda knows some Spanish but is not quite fluent when it comes to speaking it.
She is currently in Mr. Meza’s Spanish class. “I think since I already know two languages and I am currently learning a third language, it would be hard for me to learn a fourth language,” said De Anda.
Despite her hearing, there are times when De Anda does not have an interpreter.
“When I do not have an interpreter, I use a microphone that is connected to my hearing aids, and it makes everything sound a bit louder so I can hear it a bit more clearly,” said De Anda. The microphone is something that she does not need to use very often.
De Anda hopes to be a veterinarian after college because of her love for animals. “Since little, I have always wanted to be a vet. At one point I also wanted to become an actress, but it was nothing compared to wanting to become a vet,” said De Anda.
