Patient information for Breaking The Silence: Live

3 November 2016

Rebecca

32-year-old Rebecca’s case is highly unusual. She’d had no hearing problems until nine years ago when she lost all hearing in her right ear virtually overnight. Her left ear was absolutely fine and she coped well, getting on with life and going on to have a son, now aged three, who she’s bringing up on her own. 

Then this July she felt unwell one day, dizzy and faint. She went to have a sleep and when she woke up she had gone completely deaf in her left ear. In shock, all she could do was ring her Mum, tell her what had happened and hope she’d heard what she said. She says: “You hear of people being born deaf or gradually losing their hearing, but to wake up and it’s gone, it’s the scariest thing ever.”

Rebecca has been left profoundly deaf. She can’t lip read, she can’t hear her son at all; she has been suddenly thrown into the world of the profoundly deaf, unprepared.

Rebecca’s main focus is being able to communicate with her little boy again at such a crucial stage in his development. Her family tell her he is now speaking in sentences and it upsets her to think she is missing out on so much: “The main thing I want to get out of the implant is to be able to hear my son again.”

Rebecca’s implant centre: Birmingham