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Lara,
Heather and Tiffany
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One day my daughters had a confident, happy mother
the next my life had fallen to pieces.
Almost overnight, Heather Jackson lost her hearing and had to face the challenge of learning an entirely new way to communicate with the world - and her family. 'What I remember about my life 19 years ago is that I was content. I was a happy 35-year-old with a good marriage, enjoying bringing up our daughters, Lara, then eleven, and Tiffany, eight. I was generally healthy, so when I woke up one morning and noticed people's voices sounded dull and echoey, I wasn't too worried. I thought my ears were just a bit blocked.
But during the day the voices became more distorted and distant, so I decided to see an ear, nose and throat consultant. At the hospital, the doctors ran all sorts of tests and I realised they were seriously concerned. After they'd given me a brain scan - the results were normal - I was kept in hospital for five days so they could carry out a battery of other tests. By day three I was severely hard of hearing. People had to raise their voices to speak to me and already I was sensing the impatience - I was given the impressions that if only I'd try a bit harder, I'd be able to understand them.
My husband David, who's a surgeon, was busy working, and the girls were staying with my parents while I was in hospital. But I didn't mind being on my own. I wasn't unduly worried and felt sure the doctors would find the cause of the problem and life would carry on as before. There was no history of deafness in my family and it never once occurred to me I could lose my hearing.
On day five I woke up to find the ward sister beside my bed. I only knew she was speaking to me because I could see her mouth moving - there was no sound. I was frightened and started clicking my fingers and clapping my hands to see if I could hear anything, but I couldn't, so I started to cry. The ward sister took a piece of paper and scribbled on it: 'You are deaf. We don't know why. We can only assume that a virus has attacked the nerve endings in your ears and killed them off.'
I learned later that the doctors had felt there was nothing they could do, so they'd asked the ward sister to give me the news. I'm sure that these days you'd receive counselling and advice, but I wasn't given any help at that point. I simply couldn't take it in and when I was discharged from hospital a couple of hours later. I felt extremely isolated. My daughters were still with my parents and David was at work, so I walked into an empty house. The first thing I wanted to do was to call my mum and talk to my children, but I couldn't. I looked around and saw the TV, the radio and the stereo - I'd always loved music - and I knew those things could no longer be part of my life.
When David and the girls came home it was very traumatic for them as I could only communicate by writing things down. I didn't yet know that although I was deaf, I could become expert at lipreading. All I knew is that one day my daughters had a mother who was very self-confident and the next they had one whose life had fallen to pieces. I felt suicidal because I thought I had failed my family. I'd always been the decision-maker, but now I could see my husband and my daughters talking to each other and I hadn't a clue what they were saying. I felt that I'd lost my identity and my family would be better off without me.
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| Tiffany, Heather and Lara with David |
Heather Jackson
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Often, I just stayed at home and hid. If I did go to the supermarket, I'd spend the whole time looking for people who might recognise me. If I saw someone I knew, I'd rush to the back of the shop and hide behind the trolleys with tears streaming down my face. I think it was especially hard on Lara. I relied on her to handle all the phone calls, and when we went shopping in the early days I used to get into terrible difficulties. When you can't hear your own voice, it is easy to start shouting - sometimes I would glance over and see her looking as though she wanted the earth to open and swallow her up.
For a while I was so depressed I could only think of myself and what I'd lost. David was supportive, but it was hard for him. He was used to talking rapidly, but with me he had to talk incredibly slowly. My daughters were amazing and very quickly learned to write everything down and speak clearly. I started to learn to lipread my close family, but for three years I was lost. Then one day David heard about a group that was being set up for people like me, who'd been born with normal hearing but had lost it through illness and were profoundly deaf as a result. I went along to a conference very reluctantly, thinking I'd have no idea what was going on, but it was wonderful. At last I was meeting people in the same situation as me, and when the speaker walked onto the platform and opened his mouth, every word appeared on a screen behind him courtesy of a Speech to Text Reporter. It was the first time in three years I'd had access to every word someone had spoken. I cried with happiness.
My husband was with me at the conference and while we were there, he stared talking to a hearing therapist. She was obviously shocked that I'd been given no help and decided to do something about it. Three weeks later I received a letter from one of her colleagues, arranging a date for us to meet up. At first I was angry - I felt a decision had been made without consulting me - but after tearing up the letter and insisting to my husband I was coping perfectly well, I decided to retrieve it from the bin and stick it back together. I kept the appointment and began intensive one-to-one lipreading classes twice a week. My hearing therapist was due to give a talk about profoundly deaf people to a group of speech therapists and she asked me to join her. I was terrified, but I agreed to do it. I not only survived, but soon I was being invited by other groups to speak about my experience.
My confidence grew and I began to cope better with social events too. One evening at a barbecue I had to hold a candle up to people's faces as it grew dark so that I could carry on a conversation with them. The wind kept blowing the candle out but instead of feeling frustrated I saw the funny side it. Learning to laugh at difficult situations helps you cope. I still find it tough when I go shopping, though. I've often been abandoned by shop assistants who can't handle it when I say I'm profoundly deaf, and I've lost count of the number of times I've been told 'You don't look deaf!' My experiences propelled me to take up a new career in deaf awareness training. Over the past few years I've helped raise awareness by working with all sorts of organisations from the BBC to the police, and have also written a training manual. I work with the charity Hearing Concern and I am Chairman of the National Association of Deafened People. I couldn't believe it when in 1999 I was invited to an Achievers of the Century lunch hosted by the Queen.
I'm now 54 and I use my experience to get the message across that being deaf it does not mean you're stupid. It's time to get rid of the stigma attached to deafness. Deaf people don't want pity - they need you to meet them halfway. My life has taken a very different direction from the one I imagined, but I've discovered I'm still the same person - it's just that my ears don't work. Yes, there is a communication problem, but there are ways around it and, once you've found them, life can be just as fulfilling - and just as much fun - as it was before.'
(Article from October 2003 edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine. Article written by Val Sampson. Photographs/Nikki English)