THE DARK SIDE OF HEARING LOSS Teen’s near-death experience
Her refusal to wear the audio aids had a devastating effect on Madeleine
Madeleine Uaine woke in a panic after sleeping through her alarm. As she jumped out of bed to get ready for work, sand flew out from her sheets and was stuck all over her body. She had no recollection of where all the sand came from.
The realisation was slow and frightening. Only hours before – at 4am – she had decided to go for a swim at Auckland’s Eastern Beach, while intoxicated and on antidepressants.
In the cold light of day, the understanding of how she’d risked her life hit her – and that moment became her epiphany.
“It was a real wake-up call,” the 23-year-old says. “Before I left to go out with my friends that night, my mum had told me to look after myself, but I didn’t. I remember feeling so empty, as I had for months. I didn’t intend to do anything stupid, but I did.”
Alcohol had become a way to mask the statuesque beauty’s sadness, to hide her feelings of isolation and despair.
Born prematurely, Madeleine suffered moderate-to-severe hearing loss. But her condition wasn’t diagnosed until she’d had two years of speech therapy to treat what specialists originally thought was language delay.
She was given her first pair of hearing aids at age six, but as a teenager she became selfconscious and rarely wore them. At 14, Madeleine lost them for a fourth time and didn’t bother to get them replaced.
Studying design and visual arts at university, she passed only practical exams, such as drawing and painting, and struggled with written work and understanding what was said in lectures.
After two and a half years, she dropped out and it coincided with her troubled long-term relationship coming to an end.
Like many with hearing loss, Madeleine was disconnected from those around her, isolating herself and becoming solitary. As a result, she says, her mental health suffered and she developed some unhealthy coping mechanisms, including drinking excessively.
While working in customer service at Auckland Art Gallery, she admits she wasn’t bold enough to tell her employers she had hearing loss. When meeting tourists, she’d try to make eye contact, surreptitiously lip reading to decipher what they were saying, often without success.
Then two years ago, after realising her scary early-morning swim could have resulted in tragedy, Madeleine started to see a counsellor, who encouraged her to begin wearing hearing aids again.
She recalls her wonderment at all the sounds she could hear. “I was just so happy I couldn’t stop smiling – I could hear the birds, even cars indicating as they waited for the traffic lights.
“I wish I’d known the impact hearing loss had on my learning and my mental health, and how important wearing hearing aids is for communication, and for a social life – having that connection with people,” the softly spoken South Aucklander adds. “I didn’t realise that without my hearing aids I went from being loud and confident to someone who was very quiet.”
Her counsellor also encouraged Madeleine to start doing something she loved, so she took up sign language and got back into drawing. She loves sketching portraits of famous people, each piece amounting to days of work, a creative outlet she relishes.
She is also determined that some good will come out of what’s been a harrowing few years for her.
Currently a part-time administrator, Madeleine now enjoys helping colleagues learn the basics of signing, spending time raising awareness of mental and physical illnesses, and advocating for accessibility and inclusiveness throughout NZ.
After speaking about her own experience at a National Foundation for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Conference, she has since agreed to be on a youth panel advocating for young people with hearing loss.
Public speaking daunts her, but Madeleine wants to visit schools to warn teens about the threat of suffering hearing loss from using headphones at loud volumes. “I lost my hearing through a health issue, I had no choice. Noise-induced hearing loss can be avoided – that’s what I want teenagers to know.”