When he went to bed on Christmas Day three years ago, Brian Cleary had two perfectly functioning ears. When he woke up on St Stephen's Day, he had lost the hearing in his left side. The pharmacist, writer and historian told Oliver Callan that Christmas Night had been enjoyable but not at all unusual:
"We played a few songs that night. I remember watching The Royle Family and Half the World Away came on as the theme tune – that's the last thing I heard in stereo."
Brian’s left ear had stopped working. He’s had treatment on it, but nothing has restored his hearing. And, he told Oliver, his hearing loss didn’t actually mean he heard nothing from his left ear:
"It’s a little mini horror story because your hearing is replaced with really severe tinnitus. So your brain starts looking, searching for that input and it turns up the volume and you get this nasty white noise. It got incredibly loud. It was measured when I was being assessed by an audiologist and it was about 85 decibels, which is like holding a hairdryer at arm’s length all day."
It sounds like torture and Brian, understandably, had a hard time adjusting to it. Concentration was difficult and trying to work effectively would leave him exhausted from the sheer effort. At 41, he found himself visiting an audiologist to get a hearing aid fitted – but that turned out to be fruitless:
"I had no hearing to aid, you know? Nothing there. But the advice was, get something in there, it’ll stimulate the nerve."
What was the cause of the sudden hearing loss? Unexplained, was what the medics told him:
"About a thousand people in Ireland every year develop sudden hearing loss. So, it’s called sudden sensorineural hearing loss. About a third of them recover, a third of them might have some effect on their hearing loss and some of them are, it’s completely gone, like me."
Brian wants to use his new-found fame to raise awareness about sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL) as he’s discovered it isn’t well known or understood by the public or the medical community. And there are steps that can be taken to potentially restore some or all of a person’s hearing, if the sufferer gets to an Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) unit in time:
"Steroids in 24 hours of, within 24 hours of the hearing gloss may reverse the loss."
Brian has not been one of the lucky ones that found any SSHL treatment successful, but he’s not bitter about it, describing it as "just one of those things in life." With the support of his work colleagues – he works as a pharmacist in the Rotunda – he was able to go back to work four days a week. He used his Fridays to recharge his batteries and research any remaining option for his condition.
"A cochlear implant was to me the best treatment option because it restores input on that side and in studies where they’ve looked at its impact on people’s single-sided deafness, it just dramatically improved quality of life and hearing outcomes. The kind of things I was struggling with, you know?"
The majority of people receiving cochlear implants also saw an improvement in their tinnitus symptoms. So, it sounded like a good fit for Brian:
"I was getting to the stage where I could cope with it, you know where I could get by with it, but, you know, I was young and I wasn’t going to settle for getting by and going down to a reduced working week, so I was keen to try it."
The surgery took place in Berlin and Brian had to drive there because people are not allowed to fly after middle ear surgery. The surgery took place in November 2022 and the device was fitted the following January. Brian described what it felt like immediately after having the device fitted:
"One of the registrars who had been part of my medical team put on the device, turned it on and in a strong German accent, you know, 'Can you hear me, Mr Cleary?’ And it like you speaking down a length of wavin pipe, but I could hear him, I could hear his words clearly."
Not only could Brian hear the registrar, he could also hear his children in stereo and he could also hear silence for the first time in a year – the tinnitus was not just reduced, it was gone. Brian took some time out of work to get used to the implant – he describes it as learning how to hear again. He used the time to focus on rehabilitation. He listened to a lot of audiobooks; he did a lot of walking. And to prepare for his return to work, he went to the National Library every day, where he did a lot of research.
This brings us to the afore-mentioned new-found fame. During his time in the library, Brian – a self-described Bram Stoker nerd – discovered a long-lost short story by the author of Dracula that you may have heard mentioned in the last few weeks. The story – Gibbett Hill, with illustrations by Paul McKinley – can be purchased from the Rotunda Foundation, with proceeds going to the Charlotte Stoker Fund which is dedicated to researching and preventing deafness in vulnerable infants.
You can hear Oliver’s full conversation with Brian by clicking above.
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