I’m a doctor with hearing loss: Here’s my story…

How do I begin to explain how it feels to grieve the loss of something intangible?

I remember that first moment in the waiting room, my thoughts an anxious jumble of ‘what ifs’ — regretting, questioning, wondering — would I ever be the same again?

Would I be a victim of my own limitations, lonely, leading a life cut off from the world? Where would this leave me — where would my place in the world be, my place in medicine?

While receiving a formal diagnosis of bilateral sensorineural hearing loss did come as shock, deep down I knew.

I denied and denied, fighting hard to reject my impending reality, as if doing so might somehow buy me more time of supposed normality.

Yet nothing about life felt remotely normal as all my carefully curated plans and expectations steered violently off course.

The mandate of masks and face shields during the pandemic was the ultimate test as the harsh truth was thrust before me.

There really was nowhere to turn. Cornered, I was surrounded by an army of expressionless eyes and masked lips.

I was sinking — sinking deeper and deeper into that bleak sea as I struggled, gasping for air, the muffled murmurs drowning out my pleas for help.

Like a feverish dream, all I could see were the eyes — those cold, unfeeling eyes, blurring and spinning before me, morphing into a mesh of disorienting sound.

“What, are you deaf or something?”

Drowning.

A missed joke at my expense as the masked army erupts in laughter. The judgemental sneers cast in my direction. The obnoxious shouting in my face. A presumption of inattention. A presumption of incompetence — of stupidity.
I think back to a young woman, not much older than myself, undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. I instantly noticed the hearing aids hooked around her ears, made even more evident by her balding scalp.
She looked up from her chair, her beautiful hazel eyes teary and relieved, as I lowered my mask, enabling her to read my lips.

For the first time, she could clearly understand what was being said to her.

Nobody had exercised compassion nor judgement to break ‘protocol’.

I will never forget the way she thanked me. That day was the first time I voluntarily pulled my (very deliberately styled) hair away from my ears to show someone my hearing aids.

In that moment, we were no longer doctor and patient. She was no longer ‘chair 12’ and I was no longer ‘today’s resident’. We were equals, sharing a moment of mutual understanding, of community.

The silence bound us as she sobbed and mouthed “thank you”, squeezing my hand with deep sincerity.

I think back to being a disbelieving spectator, as a doctor — and head of a unit — stood in front of an entire department meeting and mocked an elderly gentleman she had encountered with hearing loss.
She laughed heartily as she recreated the interaction, rolling her stack of papers into a tube, mimicking a megaphone as she emphasised the extent of his deficit.

I sat there, the scribe of the meeting, paralysed with anger. I reflected on the hypocrisy of this woman before me wearing glasses, a visual aid deemed more superior to a hearing aid — a symbol of intelligence, even. I think back to an elderly woman I met in a hospice unit, who the entire treating team assumed was depressed or experiencing drug induced sedation, until it became known that she was profoundly deaf.

After a ward round one day, I returned alone to her room, removed my mask and sat directly in line with the woman. It was as if this most basic, human gesture, one that somehow became lost in the whirlwind of the pandemic, sprung her back to life.

Revived in that moment, she was, I discovered, the most charismatic, humorous and joyful human, whose conversations I looked forward to the most during those two months of hospice care. I think about the notes I will never hear again as I grieve the loss of who I once was, a classical violinist in my youth.

Yet, at the same time, I reflect on what I have gained: more compassion, empathy and admiration for all people, young and old, who continue to battle hearing loss in a world of largely manmade barriers, of labels and stigma. And so, I listen with everything I have, with all my senses. I listen with my heart, as I treat those who are battling loss of mind — they too feel pain and fear, just like the rest of us, though their ability to express these things is paralysed by dementia.

I listen with my heart, even as they scream profanities or throw blows in my direction, as they relive their loss in a lonely, frightened loop.

I listen with my heart as I treat those grappling with the loss of independence.

I hold their hand tightly as I break the news that they have cancer and may never walk again. The quiet is more deafening than ever, as a plume of grief traverses the room and envelopes all. The clock is ticking — I don’t need to hear it to feel its ominous presence.

I listen with my eyes as a young woman nervously dodges my gaze in the emergency department, her cardigan fleetingly slipping over her shoulder, revealing a bruise in the shape of a power plug.

I listen to her silent cry for help as she fidgets and wraps her blanket tighter around her beaten body, supposedly going unnoticed among the crowd — but I see her, and I hear her pain and her fear.

For I know better than most that listening goes beyond the ears. I keep listening with my heart as I sit in the park on a crisp autumn afternoon, watching the beak of a songbird opening and closing.

I close my eyes, imagining the melody floating delicately through the breeze. I know it’s there; I feel the music’s peaceful presence warming my soul as my feet crunch in the autumn leaves.

So, here I am, three years later, sitting in the same waiting room with my loss, still wondering the same ‘what ifs’. I know now that I will never be the same again. But through the struggle, I have gained and grown into a more empathetic person and doctor.

And I hope for more compassion for the hard of hearing and deaf community — and, frankly, anyone dealing with any kind of loss. We are all fighting some kind of invisible battle. Let’s listen with our hearts.

Dr Isabelle Schupak is an unaccredited Radiation Oncology Registrar at GenesisCare, Victoria.