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Dear Mr Camilleri

I hope this email finds its way to you, as I imagine you are extremely busy and have enough emails to read already.

But on 6 November this year, it will be 10 years to the day since I got my life back after you performed a stapedectomy on my right ear, taking it from a 15 on the hearing chart (not quite sure what the measurement was) to 95 and plenty of gasps in follow-up appointments about how good the result was. My left ear was deaf too, but you did the worst one first.

Instantly, everything was different. Instantly, the struggle of the past five years, maybe longer, was over. I’m certain some people can get by in life just fine with poor hearing – but not me. Working as a journalist in a busy newsroom, things began to go very ‘wrong’ for me when my hearing became very bad in 2008, four years before the op, when I was 34.

At first, I didn’t know why I felt ‘other-worldly’, disconnected, struggling, socially alienated (I’d always been a popular party girl), having to look at people directly just to understand them, missing important information in meetings, and oh the anxiety. The panic attacks that took over for several years because I didn’t know why everything was so hard.

Until I learned I was losing my hearing; I remember a radio colleague who sat close to me shouting, “oi, Anna, you can’t hear me when I talk to you”. And I just didn’t believe it was true, he was being ridiculous. Until my GP sent me for a test and it was true.

Even then, I didn’t fully understand the impact deafness was having on me in every facet of my life. Because my hearing loss was slow and gradual, it was hard to figure it all out. You just know that life is really hard. Crushingly hard.

In the end, deafness claimed my long-term relationship, affected my career (back on track now) and many friendships. In fact, once I got my hearing back in my right ear in Nov 2012, one friend said to me afterwards, “gosh, you’re now the person you used to be, I just thought your personality had changed, I had no idea it was because of deafness”. She and many others apologised to me for not fully understanding the impact it was having on me. But then I didn’t really understand either - until I got it back.

It was only on that operating table that my life re-started and I fully became ‘me’ again, after being missing-in-action for so long. Up to that point I could only exist by taking one day at a time. Telling myself, “this is how it is and you are going to have to deal with it, this is how your life is, take it one day at a time”.

And my goodness, the impact was instant. And I cried and cried in that operating theatre for all the things I’d lost (relationship, opportunities, sanity) and for the life I now knew, in that instant, I had re-gained. I sobbed, hot tears.

And then after vomiting all over your shoes in the recovery room (I reacted badly with head spins and sickness for hours after each surgery), I was utterly euphoric.

I remember lying in bed in the days afterwards, the post-op packing still in my ear, but being able to hear conversations in the street outside, the beeps of a pedestrian crossing around the corner, and – most importantly – I could talk to someone without having to turn my head to read their lips. Life-changing. The loo flush was terrifying and hearing my own footsteps blew me away. My voice was so loud to me and also so clear. Wonderful. My intonation improved instantly and I spoke more clearly again, like I used to. It was joyous.

About six weeks after the op, the raging, pulsating tinnitus that had plagued my sanity for years – beating in time to my heartbeat – just stopped. It just stopped and it never came back. Pure freedom.

The following year, in Sept 2013, you performed another stapedectomy in my left ear.

Unfortunately, it didn’t go so well, and the implant dropped out – I remember coming to see you at your clinic at Withington Hospital (I lived opposite, over the road without an appointment absolutely crushed because my left ear now felt ‘full’. It was another year until I managed to persuade you to re-perform the op in August 2014, and it was a success.

The ‘full’ feeling in the ear went away, as did the pulsating tinnitus. I now live with a little high-pitch noise in that left ear but I can cope with it fine – it’s nothing compared to before. And it’s like my little reminder. I’m ok with it.

You signed me out of your clinic by telling me to “go and live my life”. It’s a testament to how much that means to me that just writing that sentence has made me cry. Tears of joy.

So thank you. I’m still a BBC journalist (21 years now), and lucky to be freelance and able to pick and choose what I do. I’m also an executive/life coach and I’ve also just launch an online business selling handmade earrings. I have a wonderful partner and am a step-mum. I split my time between the UK and Barcelona.

I live life at 110% and am eternally grateful.

This email was meant to be a short ‘thank you’ but all those words just poured out – a decade’s worth of gratitude. I’m not going to shorten it – I hope you read it and can understand the impact you have.

Thank you

Anna