Sound

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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Bella Bathurst

Adjoa Andoh

Jo Coombs

Hannah Marshall

Sound by Bella Bathurst: 5. Changing?

5. Changing?

Sound by Bella Bathurst

BBC Radio 4 - Sound by Bella Bathurst, 5. Changing?

Could a routine trip to see her audiologist change Bella's life?

After 12 years of increasing deafness, could a routine trip to the audiologist change Bella's life? Concluded by Adjoa Andoh.

By 2009, Bella has made her peace with her hearing loss. 

She's found ways to cope, and ways to be happy. And she assumes this is the way life will always be. 

Then a routine visit to her audiologist changes everything.

In 1997, Bella began to go deaf. Within a few months, she had lost half her hearing, and the rest was slipping away. She wasn't just missing punchlines, she was missing most of the conversation - and all of the jokes. For the next 12 years deafness shaped her life.

Sound draws on this experience, exploring the practical and emotional impact of losing your hearing, and what it teaches you about listening and silence, music and noise.

Concluded by Adjoa Andoh.

Abridged by Jo Coombs.

Producer: Hannah Marshall

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in May 2017.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Bella Bathurst explores the practical and emotional impact of losing one's hearing.

Drawing on her own experience, Bella Bathurst explores the practical and emotional impact of losing one's hearing.

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Sound by Bella Bathurst

5. Changing?

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