The Point Fall 2019

Life Without the Five
Sensing isolation yet embracing triumph
By Angela Hom
You wake up, just like any
other day. It is sunny outside,
and beams of light stream
through your window blinds. You
get dressed in your favorite sweatshirt
and washed-out blue jeans.
You smell the freshly-baked cinnamon
rolls as you pass the cafeteria.
You enter the classroom in a hurry,
drop into your chair and take a deep
breath. Now, imagine this schedule
without one of your senses.
In this scenario, the smell of breakfast
foods fill the air, but no scent
enters your nostrils. Birds chirp in
the trees, but you hear silence. The
bright sunbeam does not meet your
eyes. Many students live this way,
but their experiences often remain
unseen. Whether they were born
with a loss or developed it later in
life, many students feel isolated because
of their missing senses.
According to the Journal of the
American Geriatrics Society, about
94 percent of adults will eventually
lose one of their senses. This statistic
refers to the loss at an old age, but
many young people experience their
entire lives without one of the five
basic senses. Such a loss can create
a barrier that causes many people to
feel different and separated from the
rest of the world.
21-year-old Elin Williams runs an
award-winning disability and lifestyle
blog called “My Blurred World.”
She was diagnosed with retinitis
pigmentosa, a rare condition which
causes her loss of vision by changing
how the retina responds to light,
according to The American Academy
of Ophthalmology. In a world where
the majority of people rely on their
vision to live, not experiencing sight
can feel lonely.
“A sense of isolation can come with
living with sight loss, and I felt this
quite strongly during my time at
school,” Williams says. “My eyesight
was deteriorating rapidly at one
point, and I found it harder to find
people when walking into a room. It
brought a huge sense of anxiety for
me. I often didn’t go into a room full
of people because I knew it could
trigger a panic attack, and so I spent
a lot of time on my own which was
heartbreaking for me.”
Those unable to hear experience
similar hindrances in daily life.
Junior business administration major
Ranita Tang was born deaf but
received cochlear implants when
she was in fourth grade. The National
Institute of Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders defines a
cochlear implant as a “small, complex
electronic device that can
help to provide a sense of sound
to a person who is profoundly deaf or
severely hard-of-hearing.”
“My type of deafness is caused by
my hair cells are not working,” states
Tang. “The hair cells detect any sound
wave coming in and then transmit the
signal to the brain. For me, I have a
wire in my cochlear. So whenever my
microphone detects a sound wave
it turns that into an electric signal
and that wire will fire up the hair cell.
I don’t have that same effect of a
sound wave going through your head,
it’s just an electric signal.”
Since Tang has had cochlear implants
since she was in elementary school,
she has acclimated to using them.
“When you first get your implants,
you won’t be able to hear right away.
So what you experience are beeps,”
states Tang. “Every syllable, every
word is a beep. Then your brain wires
you so this beep equals this vowel.
In the beginning, every weekend, I
would take my left implant off and
sleep with my right on. So all I heard
throughout the whole day were
beeps. I literally trained myself, and
there are these training exercises to
repeat each word. Your brain will
Many students live this way,
but their experiences often
remain unseen.
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