News and stories: Your stories

Fletch@ is one of the UK’s leading Deaf SignSong performers. Otherwise known as Jayne Fletcher-Brander, the 36-year-old from Wolverhampton explains how music has kept her going "through her darkest days". It wasn’t until senior school that I realised I was deaf I was born prematurely. The nerves in my ears hadn’t developed correctly, which meant I was profoundly deaf. My family were all hearing with no experience of Deaf culture, identity or the language. My parents believed that I would ‘get by’...

Vicki tells us her experience of lockdown so far, including the pressures of homeschooling and communicating with hearing loss.    I’m mum to two small girls aged 4 and 7 and so far we have been in lockdown for 6 and a half weeks with the first two in isolation as the girls had some symptoms. I have severe/profound hearing loss - and this lockdown thing has been hard! 'The biggest hurdle has been homeschooling' In some ways the things I’ve found tricky...

Elizabeth started to lose her hearing in her 40s and found she was missing out on conversations. Thanks to support from RNID, she is now getting the most out of her hearing aids and is more connected to friends and family. Elizabeth, from East Belfast, started to lose her hearing when she was in her 40s. She said: “I was in York for a conference in 1991 and I was on an open top bus. It was very windy and I...

Laura James, 30, an audiologist from Leeds, has severe hearing loss and constant tinnitus. But years of therapy and practise have taught her the best ways to manage the condition. “LOOKING back, I always had tinnitus but I wasn’t aware as a child that it was anything but normal. I thought everybody must have it. Between the ages of 0-16, I had an undiagnosed hearing loss, although we didn’t know that then. My mum was told by various doctors throughout...

Profoundly deaf since birth, Professor of forensic biology Graham Williams, 43, has tinnitus, and finds the biggest trigger is background noise. “I AM profoundly deaf and have been since birth. To manage with this, I rely on lipreading and powerful hearing aids. I also have tinnitus. My tinnitus takes the form of whirring noises, clicks, whistling and the occasional explosion. Sometimes the sounds can be very jarring and other times it can be rather melodious, which means I am looking for...

Ken leads the Belfast Fundraising Volunteer group. The team have raised more than £3000 for Action on Hearing Loss in 2019, and have lots planned for the New Year. Who are the Fundraising Volunteer Group? There are five of us in the team at the moment and hopefully soon there will be two more. I’m a great believer in team, we work together and that’s what it’s all about. Our members are Paul Stewart, Larry Kelly, Heather Kelly and Paul Taylor....

Bronagh, 37, from Belfast, developed tinnitus at just 12 years old, after standing next to a speaker at a youth disco. “WHEN I was in secondary school, I used to go to a youth disco with friends at a local hotel in North Belfast. They had big speakers playing very loud music and my ears often rang after a night there. One particular night I stood very close to the speaker - and after this the ringing never went away. I...

Two years ago, Jess, a receptionist from Newport, woke up with tinnitus. After initially struggling to manage it, she's now in control and has started a blog to help others with tinnitus. https://youtu.be/LyFE-GQxUEU "I woke up one day with a high-pitched noise filling my head. I didn’t know where it came from – there was no big moment, no loud bang, not even a big night out the night before. Initially, I wasn’t worried. I’d had ringing ears in the past...