Living with single-sided deafness, sudden hearing loss and the fear of losing my remaining hearing. ‍ ‍

On Friday 25 September 2026, I woke up and knew something was wrong because my bedsheets sounded different.

That probably sounds like an odd thing to notice. But after living profoundly deaf in my left ear for more than 30 years, I know the sound of the world through my right ear extremely well.

I touched the sheets and they sounded wrong.

My right ear, my only hearing ear, was muffled. It was like coming out of a loud concert, when everything sounds distant and strange and you have that momentary panic that perhaps your hearing isn't going to return.

Except this time, it didn't pass.

I didn't know it then, but I was about to spend a frightening week confronting something I had worried about since I was 19 years old: what would happen if I lost the hearing in my other ear too?

It started when I was 19

I was a young single mum with two young children, living in Ely. I was trying to rebuild my life. I had already been through experiences in which I genuinely believed I might die, so I wasn't exactly beginning adulthood from a place of security. I mention this because, although I cannot know whether it had any bearing on what happened to my hearing, it is part of the wider picture I have wondered about over the years.

One day, the hearing in my left ear suddenly went.

I don't remember having a particular virus immediately beforehand. I simply remember not being able to hear properly and having strange beeping and ringing noises in the ear.

I went to my doctor in Ely. He was concerned enough to arrange for me to be admitted to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.

My mum looked after my children and I spent about three days in hospital. I remember teams of doctors coming around the bed and discussing treatments. More than 30 years later I don't remember precisely what drugs they gave me, so I don't want to retrospectively turn my memories into medical facts. I do remember being very frightened.

One nurse noticed how anxious I was and taught me a grounding technique involving touching my fingertips and concentrating on breathing and calming thoughts. I also remember my aunty Val coming to visit me in hospital and being kind.

I had my first MRI scan too. It felt claustrophobic and scary, but the doctors needed to exclude physical causes for the hearing loss. I should add that I have had many MRI scans since, and today's scanners have been a much better experience than that first one I encountered.

Whatever treatment I received didn't bring the hearing back.

I was left profoundly deaf in my left ear.

And nobody could really tell me why. An autoimmune cause was one of the possibilities mentioned, but no definite explanation was found.

Then came tinnitus

Alongside the deafness came tinnitus.

At first, that was almost as difficult as the hearing loss itself. The ringing and strange noises were so intrusive that I remember wondering how anybody could live for the rest of their life with a noise inside their head that they couldn't escape.

This was before smartphones and instant access to information. So I went to Ely library.

I read as much as I could about tinnitus and learnt about habituation: essentially helping the brain stop treating the tinnitus as something requiring constant attention.

I worked at it for perhaps a year. I used background sounds. I tried not to listen into the tinnitus. I consciously redirected my attention.

Eventually, something changed.

The tinnitus hadn't necessarily vanished. If I went looking for it, I could always hear it. But my brain had become much better at leaving it in the background.

That distinction became enormously important later.

Being deaf in one ear isn't simply losing half the volume

I had decided that I wanted to become an archaeologist. I studied part-time at Cambridge University, volunteered on excavations and worked on archaeological sites in and around Cambridgeshire while bringing up my children. I eventually moved back to Cambridge to be near the Archaeology Field Unit where I had started working.

And I discovered something that I still think people often misunderstand about single-sided deafness.

It isn't simply as though somebody turns the volume down by half.

With two hearing ears, the brain uses information from both sides to locate sounds and help separate the voice you want to hear from everything happening around you. When you're profoundly deaf on one side, that changes.

A busy pub, shop or restaurant can become a wall of sound. Music, conversations, clattering plates and somebody speaking directly to you can all compete for the attention of the one hearing ear - like everything being funnelled into one place, all together and at once.

Listening becomes work. And that work is tiring.

There is a social side to that too. When several people are talking at once, it can be difficult to keep up with a conversation at all. You can find yourself sitting on the edge of a group while everybody else is talking and laughing, unable to catch enough of what is being said to join in naturally. It can feel as though you are on the periphery of things, and I can understand how hearing loss can lead people to withdraw. It isn't necessarily that you don't want to join in; sometimes listening has simply become too difficult and exhausting.

Sometimes somebody would say something to me and there would be a slight delay while my brain reconstructed what I had heard into words. Occasionally I felt people looked at me as though I were stupid.

I wasn't. I simply hadn't heard them properly.

I was also a teenage mother who hadn't followed the conventional educational route and was trying to establish myself in a physically demanding profession at a time when there weren't so many women doing heavy archaeological fieldwork, and I was determined to prove that I could mattock, shovel and push wheelbarrows alongside everybody else. The downside was that a lot of physical exertion could sometimes set my tinnitus off.

I didn't want my hearing loss to inconvenience anybody. So, quite often, I simply tried harder.

1999, at an archaeological excavation in Hinchingbrooke. Michelle Bullivant — **1999, at an archaeological excavation in Hinchingbrooke.**

As my health and disabilities have changed over the years, I have also had to adapt the way I work. One reason I am now self-employed and freelance is that it gives me the flexibility to organise work around what I am physically able to manage. I still work as a landscape archaeologist and local historian, alongside research, writing, talks and occasional film and media work, and I supplement this with my other online businesses.

It doesn't make disability disappear, and sometimes I still have to stop completely, but finding a different way of working has allowed me to continue doing work that matters to me.

The adaptations nobody sees

Over the years I have used various pieces of specialist equipment.

I had an early wired CROS hearing system: a microphone on my deaf side transmitted sound around the back of my head to my hearing ear. It could help in particular situations, but compared with today's technology it was cumbersome.

Technology has moved on since then and I now have a wireless CROS hearing aid. A small device worn on my deaf left side picks up sound and transmits it wirelessly to the hearing aid on my right. It is much less cumbersome than the old wired system and can be very useful in the right circumstances, although it still cannot recreate true two-eared hearing and I don't find it useful in every situation.

With my particular level and type of hearing loss in the left ear, a conventional hearing aid cannot simply turn the sound up and give me useful hearing again: there isn't enough usable hearing there for amplification to solve the problem. The CROS does not restore hearing in my left ear; it reroutes sound from that side to my right ear. Other people with severe or profound hearing loss may have different options, including bone-conduction devices or cochlear implants, depending on the individual and the type of hearing loss.

Cambridgeshire's sensory services also introduced me to equipment that made an enormous practical difference.

I had a doorbell connected to a portable flashing receiver, so I could take it into the garden and see when somebody was at the door. My smoke alarms could connect to a vibrating pad beneath my pillow so that I could be woken in an emergency. I also had equipment to provide background sound when the tinnitus was troublesome and a television listening system that allowed me to change the volume for myself without changing it for everybody else.

Technology has moved on enormously. Now many accessibility features are built into ordinary devices. My mobile phone, for example, can flash and vibrate to alert me.

I have also become increasingly careful about protecting my remaining hearing. Some everyday sounds can now feel uncomfortably loud or overwhelming, so I carry Loop earplugs or ordinary earplugs for situations where I need them, particularly noisy shops and other busy environments. The Loop earplugs reduce some of the surrounding noise without simply shutting everything out, so I can still hear and communicate with the person next to me.

For genuinely loud jobs at home I use heavy-duty over-ear hearing protection. My audiology consultant has stressed the importance of protecting my remaining hearing from damaging noise. I am careful, though, not to shut ordinary sound out all the time: hearing protection is something I use when the sound level or my sound sensitivity makes it appropriate.

There is also a slightly ridiculous practical side to single-sided deafness: for listening I only need one earbud, but of course earbuds and earplugs are almost always sold in pairs. I seem to spend my life buying two of things when only one side is of any practical use to me.

But technology can't entirely replace what two ears do.

I still can't reliably tell where a sound is coming from. I can be absolutely convinced that something came from one direction when it actually came from another. That matters when crossing roads and navigating everyday life.

Balance is another part of the picture for me. My balance is not always brilliant anyway because of other health problems, and my usual unsteadiness has more than one cause. Hearing and balance are not the same thing, but during this latest sudden hearing-loss episode I was noticeably much more off balance and 'wonky' than usual. Thankfully I did not develop spinning vertigo or severe dizziness, but the change in my steadiness was very obvious to me.

Covid revealed another adaptation I hadn't even realised I'd made. When everybody started wearing face masks, my ability to understand people deteriorated dramatically. It was only then that I realised how much I had taught myself to lip-read simply through decades of trying to hear. Take away the face, and suddenly a large part of my hearing strategy disappeared with it.

The fear of losing the other ear

There was always one fear in the background.

What if I lost the hearing in my right ear?

Over the years I had several scares, particularly when physical exertion made the tinnitus in my good ear suddenly louder. I would get checked, and I was repeatedly reassured.

One very experienced consultant, towards the end of his career, told me that he essentially hadn't encountered somebody with a history like mine subsequently losing the other ear in the same way. That reassurance mattered.

I am now 50. My left ear remained profoundly deaf and my right had only the degree of reduction that I had understood to be broadly consistent with ageing.

After three decades, I had learnt to live with single-sided deafness.

Then came the summer of 2026.

Something changed

In July I became very unwell with a viral illness, followed by a shingles activation that required antiviral medication.

Afterwards my tinnitus changed.

Instead of the familiar tinnitus that I had become very good at putting into the background, I developed a persistent, strong, high-pitched tone.

I woke up with it. I went to bed with it. Every day I thought, It's still there.

Several weeks later I also had a significant flare of my rheumatological condition. I have a long history of inflammatory and connective-tissue problems and am currently diagnosed with undifferentiated connective tissue disease. My blood tests during this flare showed a raised ESR and persistently raised uric acid, which has been a recurring feature of my flare-ups, despite me not having gout, which can be associated with high uric acid.

Whether any of these things are connected to what happened next, I don't know. That is important.

There are various possibilities I have wondered about over the years: viral illness, autoimmune disease, and even whether the extreme trauma I experienced when I was younger could somehow have affected the way my body responds to illness and stress. But wondering isn't the same as knowing. I don't want to create a neat explanation simply because uncertainty is uncomfortable.

The honest answer is that I still don't know why I lost my left hearing at 19, and I don't yet know why what happened next occurred either.

The morning my remaining hearing changed

On 25 September 2026, the right ear suddenly became muffled.

Eventually I knew I couldn't simply wait and hope. I went to Addenbrooke's Hospital that day, initially presenting to ENT and then being directed through the emergency pathway.

After examinations and an audiogram, I was told that I had suffered a new sensorineural hearing loss in my right ear, particularly affecting the higher frequencies.

After more than 30 years of profound deafness on the left, my only hearing ear had suddenly deteriorated.

The thing I had feared for decades had happened.

The tinnitus changed dramatically too. On top of the strong tonal tinnitus I had already been experiencing for several weeks came a mass of loud beeps and electrical-sounding noises. It was extraordinarily intrusive. Changes in auditory input can alter activity in the brain's hearing pathways; subjectively, it felt to me as though my brain was desperately trying to make sense of the high-frequency sound that had suddenly disappeared. Perhaps that was what all the new intense noises were. I cannot know that this was literally what was happening, but that is what the experience felt like.

I was also much more unsteady than normal throughout that week. I was fortunate not to have spinning vertigo, but I was definitely off balance, adding another strange physical sensation to an already frightening situation.

I was prescribed 60 mg of prednisolone every day for seven days - twelve steroid tablets daily - with lansoprazole to protect my stomach.

This wasn't straightforward for me because I had previously developed steroid-induced diabetes during steroid treatment for my rheumatological condition. It had cleared once the steroids stopped, and I had been advised to avoid steroids where possible. This time, however, the potential benefit to my hearing took priority.

I was also warned that the hearing could deteriorate further, and that I needed to prepare for the possibility that I might become completely deaf.

One of my audiograms. The left panel is my right ear: the black line shows my hearing level the previous year and the red line the sudden drop in September 2026. The right panel is my profoundly deaf left ear.

Listening to music at midnight

That first night is difficult to describe.

My close family were devastated too and very worried. If I went completely deaf it would be a dramatic change for all of us to adapt to, including the thought that I might not hear their voices again.

I was terrified to go to sleep because I didn't know what I might wake up to.

I didn't want to go to bed that night.

I wanted to listen to music.

I wanted to listen properly.

There was an almost desperate urge to store sounds in my head, just in case.

Music. Familiar noises. Things I loved hearing.

Anything I might want to remember if I woke up and they were gone.

I don't tell that part of the story because I want anybody to feel sorry for me.

I tell it because that was what sudden hearing loss actually felt like.

It was frightening.

And I suspect somebody else experiencing it may recognise that fear.

Steroids, blood sugars and waiting

For seven days I took the prednisolone and waited.

Because of my previous steroid-induced diabetes, I monitored my blood glucose. My post-meal readings eventually rose to around 12 mmol/L, and I certainly felt the effects of the treatment.

I felt physically rough as well as emotionally exhausted by what was happening.

And all the time I was listening to my hearing.

Was it better? Was it worse? Would it still be there tomorrow?

Somehow, during all of this, I still worried about letting other people down.

The emergency also meant accepting that some things simply had to stop. I had been due to travel to Hastings on the Wednesday for the final day of filming on Party Party 2, a film project for which I am an associate producer. I had to cancel the whole trip. At the time that felt like another important commitment I was letting go, but a medical emergency sometimes must put ordinary life on hold. My friend Stuart Morris, who is producing the film, was kind and understanding. It was a useful reminder that other people are often far more understanding about us needing to step back than we imagine they will be.

I gave a scheduled talk to my local history society on the Monday night, with my daughter coming along to help me. Then I had a storytelling job at Flag Fen. It was a large event and I couldn't bear the thought of letting the organisers down, and although I didn’t have the time to add in lots of new material as I had planned to, I just wanted to be able to do a ‘good enough’ job so that the public attending weren’t let down by one fun element of their evening being missing.

**In the Bronze Age roundhouse at Flag Fen, Summer Solstice event, June 2026.**

Looking back, there is a thread here that connects directly with the 19-year-old me. At 19 I wanted to prove I could cope. As a young archaeologist I wanted to prove that deafness didn't make me less capable. At 50, while facing the possibility of losing my remaining hearing, I was still worrying about inconveniencing everybody else.

Perhaps learning when to accept help - and when to cancel something altogether - is another part of this story. Being self-employed gives me flexibility, but it can also make it tempting to keep going because the work, the relationships and my reputation matter to me. That week reminded me that sometimes looking after yourself really does have to take precedence.

The hearing came back

My repeat audiogram the following Thursday brought the result I had desperately hoped for.

The hearing in my right ear had recovered almost to its previous level.

The tinnitus had gradually become quieter, although it was still making itself heard. Those additional noises began settling as my hearing recovered.

The seven days of systemic steroids were finished, and my blood glucose had begun heading back towards normal.

That was an enormous relief.

But I haven't simply returned to where I was before 25 September.

Previously, my reassurance was that losing the other ear was extraordinarily unlikely.

Now I know that it can happen.

The reassurance has had to become something different.

Now I have a plan.

If I suddenly experience another significant change in my hearing, whether that is tomorrow, next month or years from now, I know that it needs urgent medical assessment. My own ENT team has given me a clear recurrence plan: seek urgent hospital assessment rather than waiting to see whether it settles. The exact route may depend on when it happens and local arrangements, but the important thing is not to delay.

I am also very aware that treatment may or may not restore the hearing each time, so part of moving forward is being prepared for that possibility without allowing the fear of it to take over everything.

That knowledge gives me something practical to hold onto.

If your hearing suddenly changes

This is probably the most important thing I can pass on from my experience.

A sudden unexplained hearing loss or sudden deterioration in hearing can be a medical emergency.

NICE guidance says that sudden hearing loss developing over three days or less, when it is not explained by an external or middle-ear cause and began within the previous 30 days, should be referred immediately so that the person is seen within 24 hours by an ENT service or emergency department.

Cambridge University Hospitals gives similarly straightforward advice: if you experience sudden hearing loss, or a sudden change developing over three days or less, arrange to be seen by your GP or local emergency department.

This doesn't mean that every blocked or muffled ear is sudden sensorineural hearing loss. There are much more ordinary explanations, including wax and middle-ear problems.

The point is not to diagnose yourself, and not to lose time trying to decide which kind you have.

If the change is sudden, seek medical advice urgently.

Steroid treatment and the STARFISH trial

There is still uncertainty about the best way of delivering steroid treatment for idiopathic - meaning unexplained - sudden sensorineural hearing loss.

At Addenbrooke's, Cambridge University Hospitals is currently involved in the STARFISH trial: Steroid Administration Route for Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss.

The study is comparing three approaches: oral steroids, steroid injections through the eardrum (intratympanic treatment), and a combination of the two. Its purpose is to establish which approach is the most effective first-line treatment and offers the best value for patients and the NHS. Adults who have recently experienced sudden sensorineural hearing loss may be eligible.

For me, this research has become particularly relevant because my ENT team has told me that, if my hearing suddenly deteriorates again, intratympanic steroid treatment may be considered as part of the next steps.

It is also a useful reminder that medicine doesn't yet have all the answers.

Living with tinnitus

Tinnitus can be frightening, particularly when it first appears.

One of the most useful things I learnt all those years ago was that my response to the tinnitus could change even when the sound itself didn't immediately disappear.

My own way of coping developed gradually through background sound and consciously learning not to search for the tinnitus all the time. Other people may need different support.

Persistent or troublesome tinnitus is something worth discussing with a GP or audiology service. Tinnitus UK provides information and support, and CUH Audiology has a specialist tinnitus clinic.

Where to find help in Cambridgeshire

One reason I wanted to write this article was that medical treatment is only part of living with hearing loss.

Sometimes it is the apparently small things - knowing that the smoke alarm can wake you, being able to tell that somebody is at the door, hearing the television without making it deafening for everybody else, learning communication strategies or simply meeting somebody who understands - that make everyday life manageable.

For people living in Cambridgeshire, there are several useful places to start.

Cambridgeshire County Council Technology Enabled Care (TECS) provides advice and equipment intended to help people remain safe and independent at home. Hearing-loss equipment can include visual or vibrating alerts for doorbells, telephones and smoke alarms, vibrating pillow pads, TV listeners and personal listening devices.

Cambridgeshire Deaf Association's Hearing Help service supports people with hearing loss across Cambridgeshire. Its local drop-ins provide NHS hearing-aid maintenance, batteries, tubing changes and practical advice, and the organisation also offers lip-reading and befriending support.

Cambridge University Hospitals Audiology at Addenbrooke's provides specialist services including single-sided deafness, severe/profound deafness, hearing therapy, tinnitus and vestibular services.

For urgent sudden hearing loss, use the urgent medical pathway described above rather than waiting for a routine hearing-aid or support appointment.

Where I am now

I am profoundly deaf in my left ear.

My right-ear hearing has, thankfully, returned almost to where it was before this latest episode.

I still have tinnitus, although it has become a little quieter again.

I still don't know why I lost my hearing when I was 19.

I don't know why my right ear suddenly deteriorated at 50.

And I don't know whether it will ever happen again.

But I know considerably more than I did.

When I was 19, I had to learn how to live after losing one ear.

Over the following 30 years I learnt how much the brain adapts, how much technology can help and how many invisible strategies people with hearing loss quietly use every day.

At 50, for one frightening week, I had to contemplate what life might be like if I lost the other ear too.

I hope I never have to face that again.

But if I do, I know what to do.

And if somebody finds this article one day because they have woken up and suddenly the world doesn't sound right, I hope my story does one thing above all else:

Please don't sit frightened and wait on your own. Get the sudden change checked urgently. And whatever happens afterwards, know that there is help available for learning how to live with it.

Useful information and support

These are starting points rather than personal endorsements. Services, apps and websites change, so check current details and discuss medical concerns with a GP, audiologist or ENT clinician.

• NICE - Hearing loss in adults: assessment and management - Guidance on urgent referral for sudden hearing loss.

• Cambridge University Hospitals - Audiology - Audiology services at Addenbrooke's, including urgent advice on sudden hearing loss.

• Cambridge University Hospitals - STARFISH research - Current hearing research, including the STARFISH trial.

• Cambridgeshire County Council - Technology Enabled Care - Equipment and technology to support safety and independence.

• Cambridgeshire Deaf Association - Hearing Help - Local hearing-aid maintenance, batteries, practical advice, drop-ins, lip-reading and support.

• Tinnitus UK - Information and support about tinnitus, including management approaches and support.

• Take on Tinnitus - Online tinnitus information and self-management training.

Books suggested by audiology: Living with Tinnitus and Hyperacusis (Lawrence McKenna, David Baguley & Don McFerran); The Consumer Handbook on Tinnitus (Richard Tyler); and Tinnitus Information and Relaxation Guide (Richard Tyler, David Baguley & Lawrence McKenna).

Apps suggested by audiology: Widex Zen, ReSound Relief, Calm, Oto and MindEar. Availability and features may change.

Medical guidance and local service information re-checked for this publication draft on 6 October 2026.

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More from Michelle's Journal

Personal reflections on life and work, archaeology and research, disability and adaptation, projects and places, and some of the experiences behind the work I do.