Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Break the Sound Barrier campaign is gaining momentum. This week its turned its
attention to asking our community people who are Deaf, have hearing loss, or a chronic
ear condition to share their stories and experiences. Everyone has a different story,
different challenges, different concerns. What we all share is a desire to reach our
potential.
The more we share these stories and harness the energy of people power, the more we
can show why Breaking the Sound Barrier and making hearing health and well-being a
national priority is so important to millions of Australians. Perhaps one day well have a
million stories! Heres some of the stories people have submitted so far.
People can easily submit their stories to the Break the Sound Barrier campaign page. You
just need to visit http://breakthesoundbarrier.org.au/your-stories/
Add your words and a photograph if you can and click the yellow button to send.
If youd prefer to add a video instead, thats great. There are instructions on how its
very easy.
Your story can be as long or short as you want to make it but its an opportunity to tell us
and our decisions makers what matters to you.
Dont forget to share the story and the campaign with friends, family and colleagues as
well. Remind them to sign up as a supporter. One in six Australians has a hearing health
issue. We need to reach the five in six who dont as well as a call to action from our entire
Australian community.
ABC TV interviewed Deafness Forum chair David Brady about the Break The Sound Barrier
campaign, which aims to make hearing health & well-being a National Priority in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq-acoLmzCw&feature=youtu.be
AC/DC singer Brian Johnson said he had "a pretty good run" with AC/DC in a new interview, in
which he also discussed his hearing loss. Daniel Pockett/WireImage/Getty
Brian Johnson opened up about the hearing loss that forced him off the road with AC/DC
this year, and how he talked about it with the long-running group's Angus Young and Cliff
Williams, in a new interview on Sirius XM.
"It's like a young sports player getting an injury," he told In the Driver's Seat host Doron
Levin. "I feel sorry for [athletes], being 24, 25 and they have an injury and it ends their
career. And it's an awful thing. But I'm lucky. I'm 68. ... And I've had a pretty good run.
I've been in one of best bands in the world."
The singer who is also a car enthusiast also detailed the time he first noticed his
hearing loss, at the racetrack Watkins Glen International in New York State. At a race about
eight years ago, he forgot to put earplugs in and five minutes in, he felt "a little pop" in his
ear. "I was like, what the heck was that?" he said.
"But it was fine. All that happened was I had suffered tinnitus for about six or seven
months. But it cleared up and then I was fine again.
He did an AC/DC tour after that, but he said that "onstage you don't have any defense"
against what he described as "that industrial noise." "You're in a rock & roll band," he said.
"What the heck do you expect?"
Johnson also explained how he had been working with a doctor on his hearing leading up
to his departure from the Rock or Bust world tour. The trouble began at the band's
Winnipeg gig on September 17th, 2015. AC/DC played outside during a rainstorm in the
cold, and both Johnson and Young had caught fevers. "We were dripping wet, soaking wet,
absolutely freezing," the singer said. Nevertheless, they got on what he remembers as a
two-and-a-half-hour flight to Vancouver right after the show. "Unfortunately the fluids
went up into my sinuses and around my ear," he recalled.
They carried on with gigs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and by the time they'd made it
back to Australia for a break Johnson realized he ear still hadn't "popped." He continued
with the Australian leg of the tour and went to see a Sydney-based specialist he identified
as Dr. Chang, whom he met with nine times before Christmas of last year.
"I was getting worried because my right ear is my good ear," Johnson said. "My left ear is
just about totally deaf. And when we got there, that's when Dr. Chang found out that the
fluids had crystalized and had been eating away at my ear. So my good ear, I lost I don't
know what percentage but it was enough to make things very difficult. So they worked on
me."
The singer had tubes in his arm, and he was being given liquids and steroids as they
attempted to break down the crystals. Johnson laughed when he recalled Dr. Chang
looking him in the eye "with that horrible look doctors have when they know something
bad's coming." That's when Johnson learned he would not regain his hearing. He
nevertheless performed another run of U.S. shows when his doctor said he was killing his
years.
"The boys saw the charts," he said. "I'd been getting checked regularly. And they saw
there was a massive dip and if I'd have kept on going, there was a possibility I would never
hear again. Angus and Cliff just said, 'Johnno, you've got to think of your health.' And
everybody else said, 'Brian, your health comes first. You've done a whole year on the road.
You've done everything. We want to finish.' And that's what they did. It's simple. What
people don't understand is it is what it is."
From Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-brian-johnson-talkhearing-loss-ive-had-a-pretty-good-run-20160520
David Brady with Audiology Australia chair/president Prof Louise Hickson and chief
executive Tony Coles.
passed. I was shaken but did not want Menieres to beat me. After a few days of not
driving, I got back in the saddle and attempted to drive to an appointment.
Near the scene of my vertigo attack a panic came over me, and by the time I reached the
dual roundabouts, my heart was pounding. After that incident I stopped driving for 3.5
years and only started again last year, and only to the shops I am glad to have some
independence back.
Any of the little things you take for granted are gone. Life with a balance dysfunction is a
lesson in fear and loss. The world becomes a scary, wobbly place. Furniture and objects
are bumped into, objects are regularly dropped. You can't experience the inner peace of
just sitting still, because on the inside you cannot sit still.
You can probably guess what hearing
health means to me and others that suffer
from chronic ear disorders like Menieres
Disease. It is not so much the hearing
loss as the constant dizziness that steals
your life away. How can dizziness be a
hearing health concern?
The primary
purpose of the ear is spatial orientation.
The ears are connected to the eyes by the
vestibular ocular reflex so we can exist and
move in a three-dimensional world. That
is the primary purpose of the middle ear.
Perhaps this is why middle ear disorders
have fallen through the cracks in Australia.
How can we assist people with a balance dysfunction when they only recognise one
function of a sensory organ. Until it has greater awareness, Australians with chronic ear
disorders will go unheard and unsupported.
One of the more frightening symptoms of inner ear dysfunction are drop attacks, also
known as otolithic crisis. Again, I am not a person of science so I have had to learn all this
myself. I have had three drop attacks. Two attacks caused my head to be violently thrust
to the side as if someone had hit my head with a baseball bat and vanished. On both
occasions I was lucky to lunge onto a countertop or bed and avoid injury. The third attack
was the most frightening, I was in the powder room at home when I turned to the door,
but halfway through unlocking the door, I fell straight down. It came upon me so suddenly
I had no opportunity to break my fall. It didn't feel as though I had fallen but that the
entire room tilted 90 and the room rose up to hit me in the head the most frightening
experience of my life.
Unfortunately, I am not alone in this experience. One American study estimated drop
attacks account for a quarter of falls in older patients. This estimate may be high but,
nevertheless, drop attacks are a serious problem warranting further research. In 2013,
deaths from accidental falls more than doubled in one decade. Questions need to be
asked, but who is asking them?
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare produced an 800 page report on Australian
health. One would expect hearing loss to be a feature, at least a few paragraphs, but a
keyword search showed almost nothing at all. The nine national health priority areas
received significant mention and discussion but what about hearing health? We have the
number, in terms of those affected, but we do not have government attention.
Chronic ear disorders are an invisible illness it is a challenge for people to show what it is
like to live with ear dysfunction. I want to make chronic ear disorder more visible. Please
sign our petition. Over 40,000 Australians with Menieres disease need your help. Please
lend your support by calling on the federal government to add urgently needed Menieres
disease medications to the PBS. Together we can alleviate the financial burden of
Australians suffering from Menieres disease and improve their quality of life.
https://www.change.org/p/over-40-000-australians-with-meniere-s-disease-urgently-needyour-help-please-sign-and-share-this-petition
This was also the subject of a complaint to the New Zealand Human Rights Commission by
the Captioning Working Group.
Mrs. Louise Carroll, Chairperson of the Captioning Working
Group and Chief Executive of The National Foundation for
the Deaf said in a statement This is not about just about
access to the Rugby or the latest sporting event attracting
New Zealanders attention, its about a large group of New
Zealanders being marginalised as they are not offered
inclusion through access. In a 21st century digital society
inclusion for all New Zealanders really does matter.
There is no legislation in New Zealand requiring
broadcasters and video on demand providers to provide
captioning.
Louise Carroll
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=the%20ambling%20photographer