I’ve always been terrified of losing my hearing – but when it happened, I craved silence – The Guardian
Since childhood I feared losing my hearing. I imagined that it would feel like being dragged down by an undertow. A violent, terrible force that I would have to resist with arms and legs kicking. And if submerged, my body would be cut off from sound.
My fear came from a specific place: I was born profoundly deaf in my left ear. Logically, I reasoned, that I was one ear closer to complete hearing loss. This rationale was reinforced by doctors and aud…….
Since childhood I feared losing my hearing. I imagined that it would feel like being dragged down by an undertow. A violent, terrible force that I would have to resist with arms and legs kicking. And if submerged, my body would be cut off from sound.
My fear came from a specific place: I was born profoundly deaf in my left ear. Logically, I reasoned, that I was one ear closer to complete hearing loss. This rationale was reinforced by doctors and audiologists. At each check-up they would say, “Fiona, you must protect your right ear.”
Throughout my teens and 20s, I took the task seriously: wedging ear plugs deep into my ear canal before attending concerts; sitting as far away as possible from the speakers at footy matches; clapping my hand over my ear whenever walking past leaf blowers or lawnmowers; monitoring the volume of music playing through my headphones; and even, eventually, moving away from a flight path to a quieter suburb. My resolve was absolute.
Yet, despite my vigilance, when I was 31 years old, an audiogram revealed that I had acquired moderate hearing loss in my right ear. The news was shocking. I wept.
Fiona Murphy: ‘As I began to lose my hearing, my body craved silence more than sound.’ Photograph: Text Publishing
After passing me a box of tissues, the audiologist explained that my test results were unusual. Instead of losing higher frequencies, as typical for age-related hearing loss, I could no longer detect lower frequencies. I agreed to contact an ear, nose and throat specialist. Once home, I howled. My fears had been realised.
In the weeks while I waited for a diagnosis, I tried to figure out how I could have been so careless. If anything, my desire for solitude had been intensifying since my late 20s. I actively turned down invites to social gatherings. I stopped going to live music events and the cinema. Watching television became a rare occurrence. I felt most at ease whenever I was alone with a book. Surely, I had done all the right things?
It turned out I had a rare genetic condition: otosclerosis. The bones of my ear – the smallest bones in the human body – had been ossifying. They were developing a kind of exoskeleton, which limited their ability to thump on my eardrum and transport sounds to my brain.
The specialist was unable to predict when my …….
