‘It was like hearing for the first time’

DES Watts will never forget the moment he suffered irreparable hearing damage in a motorcycle accident. “Straight afterwards I was actually deaf. I remember waking up in the hospital and a woman went by with a medication trolley, and there was just no sound as it went by, no sound at all.”

His hearing gradually came back, but was never the same. “The bones in my middle-ear are kind of mashed together, there’s nothing that can be done about it.”

Des, who is now 58, says: “I’ve lost all the high tones and have moderate to severe hearing loss of the low tones.”

“However, Amplifon is constantly helping me by providing me with the latest state-of-the-art hearing aids and the very best hearing experience that is possible.”

Amplifon is a global hearing specialist with more than 200 hearing centres in the UK which provide expert advice and service. Des says: “Amplifon is right at the forefront in terms of keeping up-to-date with the technology. It seems to have moved on every time I go in,” Des says.

“Although my hearing is deteriorating, the technology is improving so much it is keeping up. I am amazed at how hearing aids have progressed in the time I have been using them.”

In the years following the accident, Des, who was employed as a youth worker, was aware that his hearing was getting worse. He “got away with it” but it was becoming more and more difficult: “In my early 30s I moved into a residential setting and I realised it was becoming a problem. I couldn’t hear everybody in a group situation, especially if there were other noises in the room.”

Then, when he took up a new post at a busy NHS Hospital in south London, Des realised he had to do something. “I was sometimes in wards, where it was very noisy and echoey, and it was really, really difficult.” Colleagues had noticed him struggling, too. “One night I went out for a drink with a friend from work and she asked, ‘Why don’t you get hearing aids?’ She had spotted how much I missed in meetings, or group settings.”

Looking back, Des says: “When you’re the one with hearing loss, you don’t really notice it. It deteriorates slowly, so you don’t realise how bad it really is.” Ironically, he had also been having regular NHS hearing tests ever since the accident and says, “I am not sure why, as I was not referred to get hearing aids or asked if I wanted them. But that reinforced the idea that there wasn’t really a problem.”

So it was a revelation when he finally booked a free hearing test at Amplifon and was fitted with his first hearing aids. “It was just remarkable,” Des recalls. “The clarity was unbelievable, I was hearing sounds in nature, everyday sounds, things like running water, or wind in the trees, or the rustling of someone’s clothes. They were