Me and my own hearing loss

To some extent, I have all of the deafness problems considered on this website. In particular, due to an only partially successful ear operation¹, I also have an extreme sensitivity² to certain sounds, even when their loudness is hardly significant to people with normal hearing. For example, if a fire alarm or fire engine suddenly starts its siren near me, and I am caught unawares, I literally collapse instantly, shaking and with tears streaming down my face. This sensitivity is my greatest problem: I go nowhere without earplugs and also, for some situations, folding ear defenders. Even more problematically, although I have tried hearing aids (both private and NHS), my pain threshold is so close to any improved hearing threshold that the aids are useless, which the consultants accept. Occasionally I use a hearing aid in my non-operated ear for a few minutes in crucial situations, but I soon feel the tears welling up behind my eyes and I am in so much pain and so exhausted that I have to give up. Fortunately I get a great deal of satisfaction from writing and communicating on the internet³.

Although my deafness certainly has hampered what I have been able to do in the mainstream hearing world, the strategies outlined on this website have enabled me to fulfil my professional aspirations in my chosen professional field⁴. 

Please note that I have no medical training whatsoever; that this website is based on experience and is not trying to sell or promote anything commercially.

Professor Pat Cryer, BSc, PhD, FSEDA    

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1. The operation was a stapedectomy for the condition of otosclerosis, and it consisted of replacing a bone behind the ear drum. Apparently the passages inside my ear were so small that they had to be enlarged by grinding bone away (possibly, I suspect, leaving some debris behind) and a new ear drum had to be grafted in place.

2. The sensitivity to sound associated with deafness is called recruitment. (The term hyperacusis is used when sounds of everyday life are intrusively loud, uncomfortable and/or painful, but it not associated with deafness.)

3. I also spend much of my time using my professional experience to research and document genealogy: my mother's Cole potteries line, my father's Fisher line and my husband's Cryer line.

4. My career has been in universities, supporting postgraduate research students (PhD students) and their supervisors - see http://www.postgrad_resources.btinternet.co.uk and in particular http://www.postgrad_resources.btinternet.co.uk/pat-cryer-cv-short.htm