Lesley Rosslyn: My journey through deafness (part 1)

I was not born deaf. My first encounter with loss of hearing came when, aged 40 years, I started to get answerphone messages wrong!

After spending a few months feeling as if I had suddenly become a, ’stupid person’, I decided to go to get my hearing tested; l went to the GP and was referred to my local hospital to have an audiogram done.

This resulted in me being diagnosed as suffering from a hearing loss in both ears. I was also given a head X-ray and questioned about my past life and asked if I had ever listened to loud music.

As a child who grew up in the 60’s and loved Jimmy Hendrix and the Doors and all the fantastic underground music that came out of the sixties, the answer was yes, although in those days there were no Walkmans or Ipods or mobile phones and my listening to loud music came from LP’s and live concerts.

Anyway, I was told that I had nerve damage. The year was 1991 and the NHS did not supply digital hearing aids. For some reason, despite having almost equal hearing loss in each ear, I was only entitled to one hearing aid.
I put it in and walked home.

On the way home I was deafened by the traffic. I got indoors and decided to cook some rice. As I poured the water into the saucepan I was again shocked by the loudness of the water pouring out of the tap.

I persevered for a few weeks but found the hearing aid useless as they accentuated all the loud sounds and did nothing to assist my hearing of voices. Watching TV became exceedingly difficult.

I carried on for about 10 years or so finding it more and more difficult to hear normal speech. It was not too bad if the person speaking to me spoke clear concise, ‘BBC English’, and did not cover their mouth or stand behind me, and there was no background music playing.

I became more and more stressed at work as my job was as a receptionist at the National Probation Service and I had to answer the phone sometimes up to 100 times in a day, speak to tradesmen and offenders and at the same time ensure I and my colleagues would be safe and that I had received the correct information from them. I also discovered at this time that I could not hear the ‘alarms’ when they rang.

My Line Manager tried to assist me with quirky telephone aids, that made no difference, and eventually I had to leave due to high blood pressure, brought on by the stress of the job.

It was after this that I discovered that the NHS now gave out Digital Hearing aids. I was given two this time, which was a great relief.

When I was retested before being given the aids I discovered that my ‘high range’ of hearing was almost non-existent and I then understood why all the years I had struggled to hear and why it had been so stressful.

Unfortunately, despite the sophistication of the digital aids I still could only hear in a quiet environment, with no background noise, and if the person I was speaking to sitting across from me did not cover their mouth. Or turn away. Restaurants and parties and public spaces took on nightmarish qualities and I had to remove the aids to sink back into relative quietness.

It was at this point that I discovered subtitles!

To Be Continued…

Lesley is a 70 year old West Sussex resident who was an ‘Essex’ girl who crossed the border(s) in 1967 and never looked back. She is looking forward to sharing her highs and lows with whoever, in future scribings.