STREISAND’S GOING DEAF!
Why Barbra will never sing again
VAIN Barbra Streisand is going deaf — but the diva refuses to wear a hearing aid and may never sing again, stunned spies spill!
The 82-year-old musical majesty bared her hearing problem last year, but an insider reveals she’s living in fear of becoming deaf as a post — and “doesn’t want people to see her with those ugly contraptions in her ears. She’s been to several doctors but there’s not much they can do. There’s no cure at this point or medication that can help!”
The Send in the Clowns songbird recalls hearing “clicks” in her ears from an early age — but instead of taking her to the doctor, her mom gave her a hot water bottle to use as a pillow!
“But they didn’t go away, and one morning when I was in the sixth grade I woke up with something new. All these sounds, ‘pings’ and ‘pongs’ like musical fireworks were going off in my head,” she wrote in her memoir, My Name Is Barbra.
“That was really scary. Then the pings settled into a high-pitched ringing.
Years later I found out that this ringing in the ears is called tinnitus, and it has something to do with the connection between the inner ear and the brain.”
Medical experts say tinnitus is incurable and can be associated with hearing loss.
“She’s been prescribed hearing aids and she’s tried wearing them, but she gave them up,” says the mole. “She doesn’t like things in her ears and says they’re uncomfortable. But we suspect it’s a vanity thing. Her friends think her hearing loss is a big reason why she retired from singing. She just can’t face the music again.
“She would be fine if she wore an earpiece, but she refuses. It drives her hubby, Jim Brolin, nuts because it’s a simple solution to her problem, but she won’t hear of it!”