The experience of Martin, Colin and Gloria shows that adjusting to a sudden
loss of hearing due to illness or accident can take anything from three or four
months to a year or more, and that there may be many things to sort out before
you will be ready to return to work. Examples are:
· you may need to receive outpatient treatment to help you recover from the physical effects of your illness or injury (e.g. attending an outpatient centre for physiotherapy to restore your balance and mobility, learning relaxation exercises to relieve your tinnitus);
· you may need help to accept yourself as a deafened person. This could involve discussing your feelings with a Hearing Therapist (HT) or Social Worker for the Deaf (SWD), as Gloria did; joining a local self-help group where you can meet other deafened people; or going on a specialised course to examine the problems caused by your deafness in the company of other deafened people, such as the residential course at the LINK Centre for Deafened People at Eastbourne, from which Martin, Gloria and Colin all benefited.
· you may need help in resolving tensions in the family caused by your deafness. Your partner or children may need help to come to terms with your deafness and to cope with changes in the way the family functions now that you are deaf. Again this help could come from a SWD or an HT or by taking members of your family with you on a residential course at the Link Centre;
· you must start learning to lipread and are likely to need help from a lipreading teacher or an HT or by attending local lipreading classes, so that you can understand what people are saying when you are back at work. Colin's experience illustrates the value of starting lipreading classes before you return to work;
· you should ensure that your hearing is tested to see if it can be improved by more powerful hearing aids, as it was for Terry, or whether, like Gloria, you could benefit from a cochlear implant.
How to deal with a delayed return to work
It is important to keep your employer informed of your progress in preparing for your return to work, particularly if your return is going to be long delayed. In that case your employer may be tempted to retire you on medical grounds, as happened in Gloria's case; but there are several other options which you should encourage your employer to consider, including:
· extending your period of sick pay;
· arranging for you to return to work part-time initially;
· finding you a different job for the time being, typically with less call for communication by telephone or at meetings, to allow time for you either to adjust to working again before deciding whether you can return to your old job or, if you are going to have a cochlear implant, to see how much it improves your hearing and communication skills.
Your employer will be well advised to consider these
options if he is covered by the employment provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act. So it is important not
to agree to medical retirement if you think that eventually you may be able
to do your old job again.