Loose Women host Kaye Adams has opened up about her own struggle with deafness and her reluctance to accept she was losing her hearing, sharing her issue as Rose-Ayling Ellis joined the panel for a special show on Wednesday.
After introducing former Strictly winner Rose to the panel, Kaye explained to viewers at home that 11 million people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing, adding: "One in five of us will experience hearing loss in our lifetime and I'm one of them. As ever, I'm wearing my hearing aids; I had to take one out actually, so I've got one sitting just under the desk."
Later on in the Loose Women broadcast, Kaye discussed the 'isolation' faced by people in the deaf community and the issues Rose faces on a daily basis, when it comes to things other people take for granted, like wanting customer service over the phone, adding: "People think that listening is just through your ear, but actually, there are so many different ways to communicate. We can communicate visually, we can communicate with paper, body language and sign language. It's a culture, it's a community an it's something I belong to.
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"And I think, when you try to 'fix' me, I don't belong to it, I never will. So instead of trying to make me overcome my deafness, let me embrace my deafness and I belong to a community."
As the conversation went on, Kaye explained: "I am losing my hearing, I have hearing aids, which funnily enough, I was doing a conference yesterday and it was the same one I did a year ago that I thought 'I've got to get hearing aids, I just can't function anymore' and it was a difficult thing to do because of all the negativity that surrounds it and to sort of accept I'm getting older and my hearings going...it felt like a bad thing."
She added: "But actually that's transformed my life. So now, I'm in restaurants, I'm in cafes and I'm not continually saying 'What? Pardon?' etc etc but there's still a bit of resistance and it did take a bit of a leap to be honest."
Rose replied: "I've seen it a lot in older people who are losing their hearing and they don't ant to wear one (hearing aids). I'm like 'What's wrong with it?' You wouldn't not put glasses on to make it harder for yourself when trying to read. It does take time to accept though. People around you have to learn to adapt and be patient.
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