Maureen's job as a physiotherapist
Maureen qualified as a physiotherapist when she was 21 and has worked with children with physical disabilities since she was 25. At the time when she first noticed her deafness, she was working part-time (two days a week) in a special school run by the RNIB for visually impaired children who also had other physical disabilities. It was a small school with close contact between the staff, pupils and parents.
Maureen's job was to give the children medically prescribed exercises to assist their physical development. She received information about their needs mainly from medical correspondence. In addition, from time to time she needed to talk to the children's parents and teachers about their physical development; occasionally she did this by telephone. There was less need to talk to the children themselves; she could see for herself how they were reacting to the exercises. Finally, as a member of staff, she was expected to attend staff meetings.
Maureen worked part-time because she had two small children to look after. Her husband was the main breadwinner; but her part-time earnings made an important and necessary contribution to the family budget.
Ignoring the first signs of deafness
Maureen was 35 when she first noticed that she could not hear people speaking behind her nor understand rapid speech on the telephone. For two years she ignored these signs of hearing loss; but, when they got worse, she went to an ENT consultant, who told her that she had sensoneural deafness in both ears; that there was no known cure; and that she needed a hearing aid. He gave her no information about any other form of help.
Maureen found the consultant's assessment devastating and for about a year refused to get a hearing aid. Eventually, she went back to the consultant and was fitted with a hearing aid in her right ear; but she was sensitive about wearing a hearing aid at the age of only 38 and, to begin with, wore it only occasionally.
At this stage her deafness had little effect on her work as a physiotherapist. The essence of her job was the physical exercises which she could administer without much conversation, and she could still hear well enough to discuss familiar subjects with teachers and parents on a one-to-one basis, with the help of lipreading and some skilful guesswork.
The impact of becoming severely deaf
Over the next seven years, however, her hearing deteriorated noticeably, on average every six months, so that her hearing aid had to be adjusted or changed. She found it increasingly difficult to follow conversation in any group setting and needed an inductive coupler linked to her hearing aid to use the telephone.
Although she was naturally quite a good lipreader, she began to look for help to improve her lipreading. One day, about six years after she first noticed her deafness, she discovered by accident the existence of a speech therapist in Worcestershire. She saw an advertisement in a children's health centre offering lessons in lipreading. She went to see this therapist and had about six lipreading lessons with her.
The therapist was the first qualified person she had met who gave her any practical help in coping with her deafness. She also told her about the LINK Centre and gave her Rosemary McCall's book on lipreading. (Speech-reading and Listening Tactics: a guide to self-help, published by Robert Hale). Maureen found this book helpful in encouraging her to adopt a more positive attitude to communicating with hearing people.
Despite this help and encouragement, she still found lipreading difficult as her hearing deteriorated further. At the age of 43 she was fitted with hearing aids for both ears to increase the level of support for her hearing. Two years later she had two powerful Phonic hearing aids but, even so, was now having difficulty in using the telephone with the inductive coupler and depended almost entirely on lipreading to interpret speech. She realised that she was now severely deaf.
At this stage her approach to her job changed significantly. She reduced her communication with children, teachers and parents to a minimum and asked other members of staff to answer the telephone for her. Although she still attended staff meetings, she played no part in them and depended on other members of staff to let her know what was decided. Maureen feels that she was fortunate to have been working for a small organisation, with close contact between staff. This made it easier for her to ask other members of staff to help at short notice, if her deafness suddenly caused a problem. In effect, their support enabled her to continue working at the school.
Her new role as a lipreading teacher
When Maureen realised that she was already severely deaf at the age of 45, she reviewed what she should do with the rest of her working life. At that time there were no lipreading classes for hard of hearing or deafened people anywhere in Worcestershire; she decided to train as a lipreading teacher to provide some. So she enrolled for a one year part-time course for lipreading teachers at Manchester Polytechnic (which is now known as Manchester Metropolitan University).
The course was well organised, and through it she at last gained up-to-date information about a range of technical aids and support workers available for hard of hearing and deafened people (e.g. loop systems, textphones, lipspeakers and notetakers) and the benefits of having a cochlear implant.
As she came to the end of the course, she worked hard to persuade various colleges of education to set up lipreading classes for hard of hearing and deafened students in four centres in Worcestershire – Worcester itself, Redditch, Bromsgrove and Kidderminster. As a result of her efforts she created a second part-time job for herself as a lipreading teacher. On days when she was not working as a physiotherapist she ran classes in lipreading at each of the four centres for three terms of 10 weeks.
She found the work satisfying but exhausting. Each class ran for two hours, with as many as 23 students in one class and varying levels of hearing loss and lipreading ability. Presenting material to the class and responding to students' questions for two hours required considerable concentration and was very tiring.
The combination of this work with her job as a physiotherapist became too much for her to sustain, particularly as her hearing was continuing to deteriorate rapidly. Often she was so exhausted when she returned home after her work as physiotherapist or lipreading teacher, that she could not make the effort to communicate with her family because this would have involved further lipreading. So, after three years working as a lipreading teacher, she did not renew her contracts to provide lipreading classes in Worcestershire.
The impact on her work of becoming profoundly deaf
In the three years after Maureen recognised that she had become severely deaf she lost the rest of the hearing in her right ear and almost all the hearing in her left ear. By the age of 48 she could no longer use a loop system and was effectively cut off from all but a few loud environmental sounds. She had now become profoundly deaf.
This period coincided with a change of job. When she was 46 the RNIB closed the school where she had been working. However, a colleague who was working in a school for children with special needs in South Birmingham encouraged her to apply for a part-time vacancy there when another physiotherapist left. She applied and was appointed.
The new school prepared children with physical disabilities to go into mainstream education, and her job there was similar to her previous job at the RNIB school: to take the children through exercises to help with their physical development and give their teachers and parents practical advice.
She used the same strategy to survive in the job as she had at the end of her time at the RNIB school, with the difference that as she became profoundly deaf, the effort required for lipreading without sound was much more demanding than before so that she focused almost entirely on giving the children their physical exercises. Moreover, outside her family and her work, she virtually stopped talking to people, and not being stimulated by sound made many aspects of life seem blank and boring.
Becoming a part-time social worker
Her working life became more interesting when at the age of 50 she agreed to work part-time for Worcestershire Social Services Department for a six month trial period to carry on some of the work done by the retiring Social Worker for the Deaf in the county. This work involved visiting people's homes to deal with applications for textphones, loop systems and other technical aids for deaf people, and working with other staff in the Council.
She had her own textphone installed in the office and could use Typetalk with hearing people, which she found worked well for her. Although she had no qualifications as a social worker, she was well versed in the technical aids available for hard of hearing and deafened people as a result of her course to become a lipreading teacher. Overall she thoroughly enjoyed the job; but it was not well-paid, and when the six month trial period expired, she decided not to continue with it.
The impact of having a cochlear implant on her work and life
When Maureen became profoundly deaf, she decided to pursue the option of having a cochlear implant. She went for tests at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and was found to be suitable. She was then 50; but it was another 20 months before she had the implant operation. The delay was due to the fact that originally Worcestershire Health Authority did not provide funding for cochlear implants. Only after she had twice raised the issue with local MPs and Jack Ashley did she secure the Authority's support for her operation.
The speech processing equipment was turned on a month after her operation. Her hearing improved immediately. The strange, distorted sounds that she had heard previously were replaced with a clear appreciation of speech (she now recognises all the words in about seven out of every 10 sentences) and even of some music (especially familiar tunes). She can now follow lectures if she sits in the front row and the discussion at meetings if she sits near to the chairperson. Similarly ,she can take part in a discussion with any small group of people if she is close to each of them. Using the telephone is still difficult because then her hearing cannot be supported by lipreading; but with practice she has become reasonably proficient.
A key advantage of the implant is that it has taken most of the stress out of her job as a physiotherapist. She now enjoys the job instead of doing it mechanically as a duty without pleasure. She now converses much more easily with the children and gets to know them as individuals instead of seeing them purely as patients. She has developed more friendly and relaxed relationships with their parents and other staff. And, at the end of the working day, she is no longer exhausted but has energy for leisure activities in the evening.