"My life has gone from black and white to colour"

Simon, 59, was diagnosed with bilateral congenital sensorineural hearing loss when he was four years old. For most of his life he managed his hearing loss by ‘muddling through’.

Now, with hearing dog Flori to build bridges between him and other people, his life has changed from black and white to full colour.

This is Simon’s story in his own words: 

I am the only person in my family who is deaf, and it wasn’t until my sister came along two years after me, and started speaking before me, that my mother realised something was wrong. 

My mother’s attitude to my deafness was that it should be overcome or ignored, rather than accommodated or adjusted for. She even refused to turn up the TV, and as there were no subtitles in those days, I had to lie on the floor close to the TV so I could hear it.

At her insistence, because she didn’t feel I would be able to get a job with my ‘deaf’ voice, I had speech therapy as a teenager. My parents were told I would never gain any qualifications. After obtaining two bachelor's and one master’s degree, and publishing an academic textbook on mental health and mental capacity law, I think I have proved them wrong!

Today, the main impact of my hearing loss is that when I take my hearing aids out, I can’t hear anything at all. Before Flori, there was always the fear in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t hear the fire alarm. Or, if someone broke into my flat, I wouldn’t hear them until it was too late. 

I became adept at waking up before the alarm went off, but this meant my sleep suffered. I tried a vibrating alarm, but would always wake up to check it hadn’t slipped out from underneath my pillow. This certainly didn’t aid a restful night’s sleep. 

I am not good in big groups as I find the conversation hard to follow, so I prefer socialising with a small group of people. As a deaf gay man, finding accessible safe spaces has been difficult. The gay community is very focused around pubs and clubs with large crowds and loud music, so it’s not very accessible for deaf people. 

The pandemic made me realise how much I’d relied on muddling through by lipreading and hearing what I could. Overnight, everyone was wearing masks and my ability to lipread was lost. It was devastating.

For the first time in my life, I saw my deafness as a problem rather than just something that was a part of me.

Flori bounced into our lives in late 2023. She was impossibly cute with her big black eyes hiding behind tufts of curly black fur and, for me, it was love at first sight.

Flori does a great job of alerting me to sounds, in particular the alarm clock, smoke alarm and cooker timer. I rest much easier at night knowing she is there and that she would alert me if the smoke alarm went off.

Although her ability to alert me to sounds was the main reason I applied for a hearing dog, it is actually her ability to break down barriers that has turned my life upside down.

I have often struggled to initiate conversations, but that is most certainly not a problem when Flori is around. She is such a cheeky, loving soul. She loves people, so whenever we are out and about, I have had to get used to speaking to random strangers on a daily basis. The world is now a much warmer and friendly place.  

I had the privilege of meeting Julie, Flori’s dog training instructor, and Bridget, her volunteer trainer, in person when we visited Devon recently for a holiday. I cannot thank them enough for their amazing work which brought this total bundle of joy bouncing into my life.

Looking back on my life before Flori, I realise it has gone from black and white to colour now that she is part of it. I am looking forward to many more adventures with her.