‘I CAN HEAR AGAIN!’
AFTER SUFFERING A TRAGIC STROKE 26 YEARS AGO, MICHELLE IS FINALLY GETTING HER CHRISTMAS WISH
Michelle Morgan had decked the halls, adorned the tree with colourful baubles and was ready for a Christmas Day to remember with her partner and 6-year-old daughter, Chevy, in 1994. Five months pregnant and engaged, life was good. Then, without any warning, it changed forever.
“I was excited, getting ready for Christmas and making plans for what we’d do as a family,” Michelle, now 49, tells New Idea. “But suddenly I felt extremely hot. I got up to go to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, but when I walked I felt like I was being pulled to one side.
“I managed to stagger into my bedroom. I knew something was terribly wrong.”
Thankfully, Michelle’s mum, who worked across the street, came over and found her in distress, and took her to hospital. Once admitted, doctors rushed to diagnose the Perth-based mum, and it wasn’t good news – she had suffered a major stroke.
“The first 48 hours were critical, the only thing on my side was my age. They later told me that if I had been older I would have died.”
After waking up, she found herself dealing with the terrible side effects.
“I drooled, I stuttered, my face drooped and my left hand didn’t work,” Michelle recalls. “I hated everything about me. I wanted to die.”
There was another huge blow – she had partially lost her hearing. “Finding out that I was deaf in one ear was another trauma,” she says. “Plus, I was so worried about my unborn baby. Happily, not long after my stroke, I had a scan and was told he was OK.”
Forced to stay in the hospital over the festive season, depression took hold. But with a young daughter at home and a baby on the way, Michelle was determined not to give into self-pity. Instead, she embarked on the slow process of recovery.
“I had to learn how to walk again and do things like brush my teeth,” she explains. “Everything from then on
‘I CAN’T TELL YOU WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO PROPERLY HEAR MY KIDS’
was also one-handed, as I couldn’t use my left hand.”
While adjusting to her new normal, Michelle gave birth to her son, Tylah.
“It was hard when my newborn cried at night,” she remembers. “If I had turned over at night and laid on my good ear, I couldn’t hear him cry for his feed. At times my mum would wake me and let me know that he was awake.
“I felt like I failed. I stopped socialising, I was depressed and still pretty much angry at the whole world.”
But Michelle was determined to face the reality of her situation and her debilitating injuries. What followed was a journey of strength, resilience and hope.
“When my son was about a year old, I decided to see a therapist for the first time,” she says. “After being treated for depression, I realised that I needed to pick up all the
broken pieces in my life and to fix them one by one.”
While she was embarking on physiotherapy and counselling, life dealt another blow.
“My husband, who was my rock, was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer in 2017,” Michelle reflects sadly. “We still had so many hopes and dreams that he would fight it and win, but sadly he lost his battle the next year. He was only 43.
“Less than six months later, my mum, who had supported me throughout all of this, was also diagnosed with stage four cancer. She lost her battle the next year, and our tiny family went from five to three in only a few months.”
Though many others would have buckled after tragedy upon tragedy, Michelle found the inner strength to hold things together for her two kids.
“I did feel it was unfair, but I needed to be there for my children and they were there for me,” she says.
At her lowest, a glimmer of good news appeared on the horizon. Michelle had been recommended to receive a cochlear ear implant – a medical device that bypasses the damaged part of the ear to deliver sound directly to the hearing nerve.
“I had overcome all the other challenges and I hoped that I’d be able to recover some of my hearing,” she explains.
“I had nothing to lose, really.”
Michelle underwent the procedure in March this year.
“The first time the cochlear implant was ‘turned on’, it felt like my ear had opened,” she says. “I became so much more aware of what was going on. At first, voices sounded like Darth Vader! I was told that it would be a long process after being deaf for so long, but the voices are already much clearer. And I can’t tell you what it felt like to finally hear my kids properly for the first time after so long!”
Almost 26 years have gone by since that December when Michelle’s world changed forever. This year, the go-getting mum is looking forward to her first hearing Christmas in decades.
“I’ll be able to attend parties and work functions without stressing about not hearing people, and I’ll be surrounded with my family and new friends enjoying simple pleasures, like hearing properly!
“Now, as my hearing improves, so does my confidence,” she adds. “I’m working in a job that I love and I’ve met someone special in life, so I am finally able to move forward after the loss of my husband. Most importantly though, I’ve learnt to stay positive, to make things work and to never give up hope.”