Living life with hearing loss
01 Sep 2025
In this month's edition of our lived experience blogs, we 'hear' from Lesley Gilchrist, Operations Assistant in the IMP Division.
Did you know that there are eighteen million people in the UK who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus? I’m one of them and this is my story.
It would be the early 1970s when I caught Rubella (German Measles) as a child. I must have just missed the chance to have the vaccination, although I have had every other one since then. I remember staying in a darkened room for two weeks as my mother was convinced it would affect my sight. It did a little bit but she forgot that you could also lose your hearing as well. Thus, by the time I was in my second year of primary school, my hearing loss was well underway. Eventually it was noticed and I got my first NHS hearing aid after numerous hearing tests over time. I remember vividly the first day of getting the hearing aid – I must have been so annoyed about it as my father saw me trying to dig a hole and bury them in the vegetable garden! Thankfully, he was watching what I was doing and found them before they were damaged by soil and heavy rain...
Even with one hearing aid I was struggling. I caught colds all the time and that would make my hearing worse. I would then be off school even more and I would continue getting further behind. It got to the point where the only thing I enjoyed was reading books and learning from worksheets and textbooks – listening skills and blackboard work was incredibly stressful. Many children thought you were ‘a bit thick’ if you didn’t hear things first-time round and I found following a conversation rather hard work but the family joke was that if someone said the word ‘Mars Bar’ or ‘Caramac’, I would hear those words with no problems.
I eventually got through primary school and then went on to high school. At the age of 17 I managed to leave with two ‘O’ levels in Music and English – which I remember being described as a ‘miracle’ by my father as he more or less said that ‘he didn’t think I’d amount to much in my future life’ – which wasn’t very nice to hear (pardon the pun!). Music had become important to me from 12 years old as I taught myself how to play the guitar. I could already play the piano ‘by ear’ (without music) and I was able to memorise a tune without music after listening to it a couple of times. I think I must have thought that as Beethoven was deaf and successful, I could be successful too. In my late teens I was a keyboardist for a local Elvis Presley tribute band – in fact we got our gigs in Royal British Legion venues due to the fact that I was the only one who could play the National Anthem on the keyboard at the end of the night and so I got an extra £5 for doing that! It was great fun in the band, and I loved watching people having a wonderful time while entertaining them.
During the early 1980s, I completed my Youth Training Scheme (YTS) working in a corner shop and then I worked for the local council before joining a nursing home to work in the kitchens. Manchester “pulled” me to move there in 1989 – it just felt right – and in 1990 I joined the University of Manchester to work in MBS as it was then. My time at the University has been the making of me but it was hard at first. In those days there were no mobiles, computers, limited photocopiers, and applications. Instead, it was the era of fax, telex machine and typewriters. We would then type something onto a stencil and the stencil would be fixed onto a machine called a Gestetner to print off multiple copies (it frightened the life out of me as I could never line it up properly) - today’s young people would not have survived! I also undertook audio dictation – which is tiring when you are deaf. My brain was trying to listen, figure out what was being said, keep up and type at the same time. Luckily when I spoke to the academics who did the audio they were very understanding and went at a pace that I could follow. Also, telephones in those days did not have much of a volume control mechanism and so it was hard to hear what people were saying when they called. I learnt how to do ‘the telephone handshake’ which was a set way of answering and making sure you had all the information to pass onto the academic or researcher concerned.
After many years, I received an NHS Digital hearing aid and finally a second one for my left ear. This was a more modern one whereby you could have it set according to your hearing loss. My type of hearing loss is one where I have lost a lot of the high pitch tones – I can hear drum and bass OK but I’m not a fan! - so to simplify things, my hearing loss is in the shape of a Z in both ears and it is 95% better with both hearing aids in. Incidentally, if I see you some mornings and you speak to me, please accept my apologies if I just nod my head and smile at you - there is a high chance that I have not put my hearing aids yet and so it is best to follow up anything important with an email to me! I can lip read a little bit but using sign language is something I will need to think about for future years. Today’s technology has helped so much to make meeting organisation easier – the Microsoft Teams package helps to record online meetings (I ask permission first, of course) and I can go back and check on anything I have missed. Such a difference from when I had to listen to take notes and then I would find I could only manage an hour before my brain switched off and could not take anything else in. Thankfully, I have a great colleague support network and they have been very understanding about things.
So, I cope much better now than when I did as a child. I see hearing loss now as having more positives than negatives. It does not bother me having to wear them now as it is part of who I am. I would say nearly everyone wears a hearing aid these days, especially if they have over-done it with loud music and wearing headphones. It certainly did not help me standing in front of large speakers while in the band. It is great fun in queues when people are gossiping and you get to hear some amazing stories that you should not be hearing. Another thing I have found is that other senses compensate for a sense that is lost. I can spot a fight brewing long before anyone else can – this is probably because I like to people watch and keep an eye on body language; not everyone is successful at hiding their ‘tells’ when it really matters.
One of the most incredible things I managed to do was to obtain an Open University Diploma in Higher Education. I did all that part-time and online while working five days a week. The last year of study was extremely hard as I completed the final module during the first year of Covid. The online format of distance learning suited me and helped me to discover that I was a visual learner. I now use this style of learning within the workplace to absorb things better that way – plus there are programmes that read documents to you so you can replay everything back any number of times you need to. So, nothing is impossible nowadays and if your hearing is starting to fail, please get it checked out. Do not be embarrassed if you find you do need a hearing aid – you are simply being fashionable and remember, you can switch them off completely, especially when on the bus for total peace and quiet!