My hearing loss has been hard to accept. But there is an unexpected upside

Last week I got hearing aids. This is not something I was expecting just yet. I am still vibrant. Still trendy. I can bench press a respectable weight. I am most definitely not an old man. I went bald at 36. I started wearing glasses at 45. At 48, I had to start using a CPAP machine to help me breathe at night. Now I am 50. The decline has been slow and steady. Perhaps I shouldn’t have felt so blindsided by the inevitable surrender of my eardrums.

But there is something about wearing little capsules on the back of my ears, with their tiny transparent wires snaking into my head, that feels like crossing a border into proper old age.

I talk for a living. Listening is, or at least should be, part of the job. And yet for the past few years it has been a strain. Headphones at maximum volume. TV and radio booming obnoxiously through the house. When someone speaks to me in a crowded gym or football stadium, I allow myself to say “pardon” twice. After that, I just laugh, nod and pretend I’ve understood.

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At home, the kids take the piss. “I’m going to be late,” my daughter shouted from across the room. “Who ate a plate?” I replied. Everyone laughed. Even my wife. Hahaha. Silly deaf bastard. On more than one occasion, I’ve excused myself from family conversations. I’ve even turned down the odd social invitation. The effort of keeping up can be exhausting.

Still, 50 feels a bit young for all this. I looked into it and there are plenty of blokes diagnosed with hearing loss at this age who do nothing about it for years. Maybe they can’t accept such a vivid symbol of decline. But the longer you leave it, the worse it gets. The strain of constant listening is tiring. There are even studies linking it to early dementia.

I briefly tried to put a cool spin on it. “Too many loud gigs and football matches,” I’d say. If I could convince myself – and everyone else – that my hearing loss was the result of a high-speed life, then the aids might feel like battle scars. I could pass myself off as a rock ’n’ roll casualty rather than a decaying codger. But there’s no evidence for that. This is just ageing.

Read more:

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I eat well, exercise, do all the sensible things, but some systems can’t be repaired. Only managed. So I went to Specsavers and bought the most expensive hearing aids they had. I wanted to feel like I was buying a gadget, not a medical device. They are discreet and silver, and connect to my phone via Bluetooth.

I took the dog for a walk and switched to “outdoor mode”. Suddenly my head filled with birdsong. Not a background murmur, but a precise, layered chorus. Each chirp distinct. Each trill clear. I stood there, stunned, like someone who had accidentally upgraded reality. I extended the walk by half an hour just to indulge it.

I can stream music, podcasts and audiobooks through them too. I listened to Our Man in Havana like some sort of middle-aged cyborg. On the way back, I put on a West Ham podcast and conducted the entire journey without touching my phone. It’s been a week and I’m already wondering how I managed without them.

Between the glasses, the breathing machine, the cap that keeps my bald head warm and the hearing aids, I feel like Darth Vader. A patchwork of gadgets designed to keep the basic functions ticking over. I worry occasionally if my wife still finds me attractive, or whether I resemble a moderately well-maintained appliance. She has been very kind about it. Mainly, I suspect, because she no longer has to repeat herself. I told the kids I felt a bit sensitive about the whole thing. They have made a short-term effort to be nice. It won’t last, and nor should it.

I’ve decided to think of the aids not as medical devices, or even gadgets, but as tools. Like sunglasses, or oven gloves. They make life easier. In fact, they do more than that. They improve it. Life used to be a frustrating succession of pardons and missed words. Now I’ve got Graham Greene in my ears on the bus and skylarks narrating my dog walks.

The body may be wearing out. But at least the soundtrack has improved.

Sam Delaney’s book Stop Sh**ting Yourself: 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm the F*ck Down is out now (Little, Brown, £12.99) and is available from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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