For 12 years Bella feared she was slowly going deaf. But all she needed was a simple op
eLLA BAthUrSt was just 27 when she first noticed a problem with her hearing. to begin with, the loss was so gradual that she almost wasn’t aware of it happening.
B‘During conversations, I’d catch only a couple of words then try to second-guess,’ she says. ‘I convinced myself it was only temporary.’ But within 18 months, ignoring the problem was no longer an option.
When conversation was reduced to ‘a low seaside roar’ and traffic noise to a few ‘auditory exclamation marks’ — she could hear a car horn or a door slamming, but no sounds in between — she saw her GP, who referred her to the audiology department at St Mary’s hospital in London.
Bella, now 47, an award-winning writer who lives in herefordshire, says it was ‘the fear of being bad at my job’ that made her get help. She had started work on her first book on the Stevenson family of engineers who built the Scottish lighthouses.
‘every time I replayed an interview, at top volume, so I could hear it, I realised how many times I had interrupted people midflow or talked over them,’ she says. ‘It made me feel so stupid and unprofessional. I felt humiliated, old and deeply ashamed.’
She felt worn out from the effort of listening. ‘I’d sleep for ten hours and still wake up exhausted as I was working ten times harder just to receive and process auditory information.’ tests revealed Bella had lost 50 per cent of her hearing. the audiologist concluded this was probably the result of bangs to her head several years before.
For the next 12 years Bella lived with the diagnosis, her hearing deteriorating until it was just 20 per cent of normal range. then she was diagnosed with a condition that was treatable with surgery. After her operations, Bella can hear perfectly.
there are 11 million people in the UK with a form of hearing impairment, according to Action on hearing Loss, with the majority of cases age-related; 41.7 per cent of the over-50s will have hearing loss, increasing to 71.1 per cent of the over-70s.
hearing loss is diagnosed by a range of tests: during an audiogram, sounds are played at various volumes and pitches to determine hearing range.
Audiologists may also hold a tuning fork around your head to see if you have conductive hearing loss, caused by sounds not being able to pass freely into the inner ear, or sensorineural hearing loss, where the inner ear or hearing nerve aren’t working properly.
Most hearing loss is sensorineural, caused by wear and tear. As we age, the hair cells in the inner ear are slowly lost.
Bella’s hearing loss was blamed on two minor head injuries; she landed on her head skiing in 1990 and hit her head in a car crash in 1997. other than bruising, she thought she’d escaped unscathed. But shortly after the second accident, she began to go deaf.
the audiologist explained three tiny bones ( ossicles), which stretch across the inner ear cavity, conduct sound from the eardrum to the inner ear. If they’re crushed, they can’t work properly.
there was no cure; the only treatment was hearing aids, but Bella hated wearing them. Given her medical history, the explanation made sense, but was only half the story.
Bella had an audiogram every year and the amplification on her hearing aids was adjusted as her hearing declined. But she doesn’t remember having the conductive test to assess if sounds are passing into the inner ear.
In 2009, during a routine appointment with her audiologist, she asked for this test to be repeated.
It showed it wasn’t the skiing accident or the car crash that had caused her deafness. She’d been born with a condition called otosclerosis, which affects one of the tiny bones in the middle ear, but which, crucially, is treatable.
to hear properly, the ossicles must be able to move freely to pass sound waves into the inner ear. In otosclerosis, abnormal bone grows around, and onto, one of the bones that make up the ossicles, the stapes, which reduces movement. over time, the stapes becomes so fixed it can’t move, resulting in severe hearing loss.
the suggestion of a cure after 12 years of deafness surprised Bella. ‘I felt fear and excitement, but mostly disbelief,’ she says.
‘I thought: “Don’t be daft, there’s no such thing as an operable ear condition.”
‘the clues were there when I had tests at the start, but they weren’t clear. When otosclerosis isn’t severe, it can easily be confused with other causes of deafness.’
otosclerosis affects one in 200 people. It’s typically diagnosed in young adulthood and affects twice as many women as men, getting worse over time.
As well as hearing loss, four out of five of those affected also have tinnitus and some have vertigo. While the exact cause isn’t known, up to a half of otosclerosis cases are thought to be caused by an inherited faulty gene.
It can be treated with stapedectomy, surgery where the damaged stapes is replaced with a tiny 5mm titanium prosthetic.
Bella’s latest book, Sound, describes her journey through deafness before her hearing was restored with surgery.
She writes about the agonising social tightrope of pretending to hear while often unintentionally blanking friends or walking away from them mid-sentence.
‘take [hearing] away and you don’t just remove the simple pleasure of sound, you remove your route through to humanity.
‘It changes the way you work and the way your employer thinks of you. It changes your social life and cultural interests. It threatens to change your relationships.’
Depression is four times higher among those with hearing loss and there is a higher incidence of drug and alcohol abuse.
She blames the break-up of three close relationships on her ‘anger and sadness’ about the condition.
‘It sounds melodramatic, but for seven years, there wasn’t a single day when I didn’t think about dying. I didn’t want to die but nor did I want to live. I didn’t feel depressed, I was just very sad.’
While most people get their eyes tested regularly, people wait on average ten years before seeing a doctor about hearing loss.
Bella thinks this is to do with the stigma. ‘having hearing aids at 27 felt like being fitted for dentures or incontinence pants. I constantly felt embarrassed and ashamed.’
Given the time again, Bella says she would do things differently. ‘I’d seek help. I’d try to hide it less. hearing loss is nothing to be ashamed of.’
If you’re concerned about your hearing, it’s important to see a GP to be referred for a hearing assessment, says Gemma twitchen, a senior audiologist at Action on hearing Loss.
‘ We use medical history, ear examination (otoscopy), a hearing test and any other relevant tests as a package to help us diagnose an issue such as otosclerosis.
‘there are some signs typical to otosclerosis that may show up in the tests, but it is key to note that if you have early stage otosclerosis, some or all of these tests may initially show normal results.’
on her audiologist’s recommendation, Bella had a stapedectomy privately in France — her left ear in 2009, the right in 2010, at a cost of £6,000 per ear.
the operation is now widely available on the nhS and is successful in 80 per cent of cases.
Her hearing was restored to almost normal levels and she felt an immediate return to normality. She says at a classical concert six weeks after her second op, the music ‘swept through my senses and danced in my brain, smashed open my heart and blew the doors off my precious hearing’.
But it’s the ability to eavesdrop in cafes and on buses she enjoys most. ‘I find it hard not to lean over and say: “thank you for that fascinating conversation . . .”
‘every day I feel joy, not just at sounds of nature, but in the sound of the car starting or the washing machine: nothing is ordinary. I’ve got it back, but with bells on.’
SOUND: Stories Of Hearing Lost And Found by Bella Bathurst (Wellcome Collection and Profile Books, £14.99).