This is the town hall at the centre of Wrocław, which is where I was living at the time of these events. The photo is from Wikipedia and was taken by Szczecinolog in 2022.

Content warning for discussion of medical issues

As mentioned last time, I followed medical professionals’ lead in ignoring the tinnitus and hearing differences while I was in hospital. Once I was out in the real world, you might assume I started looking for answers. However, I felt like I had bigger issues to deal with and I continued to let it slide, not just for months, but for years.

When I came out of hospital, I couldn’t walk or stand unaided: I used a wheelchair to move anything more than a few metres and crutches otherwise. Minor bowel and bladder issues meant I was nervous being out for any length of time. Because of surgery, I could only move my left arm within a limited range, and because of the brain damage, I had difficulty coordinating my hands. I had nystagmus (periodic rapid movement of the eye) that meant I couldn’t see reliably. These were the conditions that consumed my attention and indeed my doctors’ attention. They were all so obvious.

This was 1998. According to the Pew Research Centre, ~41% of adults were online at the time. I was not: we didn’t have a computer at home and the Polish phone companies didn’t offer dialup everywhere. There were internet cafés but I they hadn’t caught on in a big way. Thus, I relied on information from doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and psychiatrists, and to a lesser extent entries in reference books at one of Wrocław’s central libraries. It never occurred to me to research my hearing issue. I just thought it was something I needed to deal with.

A few years later, I was able to stand for short periods and walk with crutches for longer stretches. The nystagmus had stopped and I had regained bladder control. My hand coordination wasn’t perfect, but it was better. Everything had improved… except the hearing issues.

This is a location in Wrocław where I used to go sometimes to get away from the city noise. The photo was taken by Sławomir Milejski and uploaded to Wikipedia.

The buzzing, whining and ringing sounds were constant, unless there was another sound I could focus on, but that could get tiring. I could only hear people if I could watch their faces, focus on them, and not have any background sound. The “s” sound seemed to disappear. I started having difficulty hearing dialogue in movies and shows when they had a lot of music and loud sound effects. Animation became impossible to follow because the visual cues of communication were so pared back. I’d come home from work with a splitting headache from trying to focus so much on what people were saying.

However, it still took time before I’d confront this growing issue. My life had been medicalised so much: I was afraid of losing more control over my time and body. I kept letting it go, thinking it would improve. I also didn’t think I could afford hearing aids — I’d looked into them, briefly, but they were extremely expensive and not covered by any health insurance or medical scheme at the time. Reluctance to continue talking about medical issues with friends and family meant I largely kept the issue to myself. A couple of people knew, but I wasn’t prepared to discuss it with them at any length.

This type of “ignoring the problem” isn’t uncommon in adults, particularly if they feel they’re the main or sole earner, if they were socialised as male or mainly have cis-male friends, if they’ve had longer periods of medicalisation without great outcomes, or if they’ve recently lost someone in a medical setting. Some of these things were true for me. I genuinely hoped it would resolve itself the way the nystagmus had. Obviously, it didn’t. And I didn’t pay any attention to it until I’d left Poland for Germany, where the attitudes to tinnitus and hearing differences would help me look at things in a less resistant manner.

Unfortunately, in those intervening years, my lack of attendance to my hearing difference may have complicated things more than was necessary…

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