Having poor hearing can be so debilitating
ACTOR Trudie Goodwin became a household name playing Sergeant June Ackland in The Bill for 24 years. She went on to star in Emmerdale as Georgia Sharma for four years, and has appeared in Heartbeat and Casualty, as well as a number of stage productions. Trudie, 66, lives in London with her husband, actor Kit Jackson. They have two daughters, Jessica and Elly, who is the lead singer of electro-pop act La Roux. Here, she recalls her lifelong battle with hearing problems...
Touch wood, I’ve suffered no major health scares nor injuries, but one problem I’ve had since I was a little girl is my hearing. I was a very keen swimmer, which I’m sure didn’t help as my ears would constantly be full of water and need syringing, but my hearing was quite noticeably dull.
And listening to music as a teen can’t have helped either, but at that age you don’t really care about the future.
I was regularly seeing specialists who simply said my hearing was impaired because I had narrow ear canals, and offered me a very bulky and not very As Sgt Ackland in The Bill good hearing aid, which I declined to wear as much as possible.
Then, through my acting career, it was impossible to wear those old-style hearing aids without it being obvious, so I’d struggle on, constantly saying pardon, often not being able to hear cues – the bane of my life was other mumbling actors – and missing out on lots of the fun banter.
I would be quite open about my hearing issues to close colleagues and family, but chose not to tell strangers or less close colleagues – you always manage to find a way round it, and over the years that became my norm.
But like many of our faculties, our hearing gets worse as we age, so about 10 years ago I bit the bullet and started wearing my hearing aids from time to time – I could keep them covered with my hair and, frankly, I couldn’t function without them.
Then about four years ago I went for a routine hearing test and was given, completely free of charge, some tiny and fantastic hearing aids which go right inside the ear. If I’d had these 40 years ago I’d have had a very different life!
Having bad hearing can be isolating and frustrating, and I know there must be thousands out there who simply don’t know what good hearing should sound like.
So, when I was approached by the international disability charity CBM to be a patron, I jumped at the chance, having felt disabled myself for so many years. I went to Nigeria with Trudie in Emmerdale CBM to look at a cataract project, which was having a massive positive impact on so many lives.
I know so few people in Africa and other developing countries have access to hearing aids, so I’m working with the charity to transform more lives.
Apart from my hearing I’ve enjoyed relative good health – I keep very active, swimming every morning in the summer months at the local outdoor pool near where we live in South London. I also do yoga and stretching every morning at home, Pilates classes, and take long walks every day.
I suppose at the back of my mind there’s always the fear that like my mum I’ll develop motor neurone disease –
mum died in 1997 from MND and it’s a horrific illness without any cure. Nobody is sure if it’s hereditary or not, but I try not to worry too much.
You have to find a balance between worrying and being generally healthy, which is a big deal for me. I’m very happy with the quality of life I have, the fact that I can still be active and spend quality time with my family. ■■Around 700,000 people are helped by CBM projects globally with 150,000 audiological tests being performed and 20,000 hearing aids provided each year globally by the charity. To find out more, go to: cbmuk.org.uk