How did it happen?

The change from the world of sound to the world of silence can be difficult to accept. Some people have said they felt like “a goldfish in a glass bowl, with people and the world moving silently around" or that "they were drowning in a sea of silence".

Deafness can affect anyone at any time. For some it comes suddenly, overnight, or over a few weeks or months. For others it may be a far longer transition of becoming increasingly hard of hearing but with the same ultimate effect.

It may be due to an accident involving head injury, the side effects of drug therapy, a virus or bacterial infection or other illness. It may also occur if your hearing has been exposed to loud noises over a period of time. For older people that could be due to industrial noise or gunshot noise but both of those causes will now be much less common. Younger people however are constantly being reminded of the consequences of excessively loud music from discos, mp3 players and iPods, which are becoming increasingly common causes. The study of genetics is developing new opportunities in many areas of health and the study of inherited deafness is the subject of ongoing research.

The change to severe/profound deafness is usually a far more distressing than the gradual loss of hearing that affects many people as they get older. Those who use hearing aids may find they constantly need changing, and eventually find that even the most powerful aids are not much help. In such a case a cochlear implant may well be indicated. If the loss is sudden and early in your adult life, the effect will be greater still and can be traumatic. There is no defined boundary and much will depend on individual character and personality. Some people will make much ado of a relatively small hearing loss while some seem able to cope adequately with a far more substantial loss. Hearing loss can be very personal as you find that your perception of sound has changed, and you find that what you previously took for granted no longer exists.

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