We Are So Close To Deafness For Real

When was the last time you were slapped?
I can bet you were slapped at least once in your adolescence.
Its either it was your nanny, a parent, a not so grand grandparent, a sibling, a senior in school, a really depressed housemaster, or a teacher on bonus payroll for amount of slaps per term.
Not until recently, I always thought slapping was just something harmless, that only possessed short term power.
Other than the embarrassment, the sharp pain on the cheeks, and the phone call you made to yourself, there was really nothing else to worry about.
The Real Harm
Sometime this summer, there was a particular male mosquito that always buzzed me at midnight. Every single day I kept shaking the bloodsucker off my head and patting it on the back.
Eventually I got fed up, and the next time I heard its buzz, I slapped my ears harder than usual. I was totally shocked that night when my ears began to ring for over an hour. I always felt the ringing was the same with every slap.
Back in secondary school, the phone call usually ended a few seconds after my inner self refused to pick up. At that exact moment was when your dignity begins to return back to you.
I calmed down, and managed to convince myself that I could sleep the ringing away.
The next morning came, and immediately I woke up, I was still making the ‘phone call’ from my left ear. The louder I spoke, the clearer the signal of the network.
I am a very scared and anxious homo sapiens, so I didn’t waste anytime before panicking and conducting a full research online.
The Research
For the first time, I realized that the ringing, the one we usually joked about in school and in comedy skits, wasn’t a funny thing at all.
I got to find out about Tinnitus, which happens when your inner ear sustains damage, altering how your brain processes sound.
It is estimated that by 2050 over 900 million people — or one in every ten people — will have disabling hearing loss. In children under 15 years of age, 60% of hearing loss is attributable to preventable causes.
Infections such as mumps, measles, rubella, meningitis, cytomegalovirus infections, and chronic otitis media (31%). Complications at the time of birth, such as birth asphyxia, low birth weight, prematurity, and jaundice (17%). Use of ototoxic medicines in expecting mothers and babies (4%). Others (8%).
In Nigeria where I’m from, about 11.39 million are suffering from a form of hearing impairment, that’s almost 6.7 percent of our population.
One of the causes of Tinnitus in our society today is domestic violence.
Domestic violence should not only be restricted to the home, but should also be called out in our second home (Schools).
Domestic Violence and Hearing Loss
A lot of Women and Students end up being the most affected by Tinnitus as a result of violence. The beating and slaps usually seem short term, but for people in that environment, the damage may remain even after their freedom.
During my secondary school days, I wasn’t the most notorious, but I surely received my monthly dose of slaps while in boarding school as a junior student. I look back and I keep wondering the pain some of my fellow students who were always beaten and slapped by the housemaster, might be going through now.
A report on Traumatic Tympanic Membrane Perforation, showed that majority of slap injury were from fights, security agents, senior students and cultists at schools in 30.5%, 17.4% and 17.4% respectively.
Ear trauma may not happen immediately while in school, but it builds up and could eventually destroy your Adulthood. Imagine going through school and working hard for decades, only to finally settle down, and begin battling hearing impediments and pains.
Traumatic tympanic membrane perforation as a result of domestic violence is on the rise. Because most assailants are right handed, the left ear is more prone to damage.
Majority of the victims suffer from sudden hearing loss, tinnitus, aural fullness, temporal bone and maxillofacial fractures. As high as eight percent of the victims of domestic violence sustain temporal bone fractures.
Real Life Cases and Survivors
I stumbled upon a case history while conducting my research. In the case is a 57-year old woman with sudden-onset of hearing loss after a slap.
She suffered acute bleeding from her left ear associated with reduced hearing and tinnitus. She also complained of redness and discomfort of her left eye; but there was no visual loss.
All this happened a day after she was slapped on the left side of her face. Previously, she did not have any hearing or visual problem. She was diagnosed with tympanic membrane perforations resulting from the direct trauma.
Though the slap might not have been the only cause of her hearing loss, it was definitely a determining factor in her auditory plight.
In traumatic tympanic membrane perforation, there is a high spontaneous healing rate (80%) with careful management. However, if the inner ear is involved, the hearing loss is more likely to be permanent.
Halle Berry, also lost 80% of her hearing in one ear due to domestic violence.
The amazing actress has since shed more light on the battle against domestic violence and advocated for abuse victims.
Halle is not only thriving with hearing loss, but she is using it as an inspiration to drive societal transformation. This just goes to show the extent to which domestic violence and long term damage to the victims go.
It opens us up to the long-term harmfulness of violence and alerts us on how it must always be condemned in any shape or form.
I Got Lucky
Who really knows the extent of damage to my ears, especially my left ear which was the exact ear affected by the minor ringing episode I recovered from.
My ear rang for days, and I was thinking of a lot, my past and the potential causes that might have led to the ear I always thought was solid, ringing nonstop for a good part of that week.
I’m good now, but I’m more informed on how actually delicate the ear is, and why you should avoid unnecessary trauma directly on your ears.
Ever since that day, I try to be more conscious when slapping mosquitoes buzzing in my ear. My ear has finally began to warn me that ‘enough is enough’.
Stay Safe
It’s just so sad, that a lot of us who did nothing wrong have to live with weak left ears.
All the ear trauma from secondary school and sometimes even parents have left us with temporary ear injuries that might erupt into serious damage if not properly treated and taken care of in future.
This is why we must re-orientate ourselves on our ‘slap-culture' especially here in Africa and across the world. There needs to be more awareness on the long term damage that slaps cause, we can’t keep masking glaring violence under the guise of discipline.
The ‘slap culture’ is still seen as a joke even till today, to the point where in some families ‘slapping’ isn’t even seen as a form of violence. Nobody deserves to be slapped, nobody should go through suffering and surgeries all because someone else’s baseless ego went overboard.
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