January needs optimism. So here, to give you some cheer, is a story of a friend of mine who has just, against all the odds, had her hearing restored by brilliant NHS surgeons, defying the moaners, doomsters and complainers who would have us believe that Britain is irredeemably broken.
Lorraine, a chief executive in her 50s, had failing hearing for a long time. She had otosclerosis, a condition affecting the bone surrounding the inner ear. In the UK, it affects one or two people in 100; in the US it’s legally classified as a rare disease. Abnormal growth around the stapes (the stirrup bone), causes fixation of the bone and reduces the sound that reaches the inner ear. The stapes, 2-3mm wide, is the body’s smallest bone.
Both of her ears were affected, one badly. Initially, she was advised just to wear hearing aids. The advantage of aids, as the UK’s ear, nose and throat medics’ organisation, ENTUK, puts it, is there’s no risk to the patient. Or, as is left unsaid, to the surgeon – because it is a high stakes operation.
As her bad ear worsened, heading for almost total hearing loss, her consultant agreed to perform a stapedotomy. He would use a laser to drill a tiny hole in the tiny footplate of the stirrup bone – Lorraine’s was only 2mm wide – and then secure an even tinier prosthesis, a piston, into the hole. Usually, the operation is successful.
But not this time. In theatre, the surgeon discovered her stirrup bone was unstable – too much to drill into. Knowing that to continue risked a completely dead ear, he understandably stopped the operation.
Related articles:
It was a severe blow. Her hearing on one side had to be regarded as lost. As it deteriorated, she dreaded the future when the other ear failed too. Until you face this reality, no one realises how precious hearing is. The deaf community, who sign, will not agree, but in my experience adult-acquired deafness is profoundly disabling. Worse than blindness. My father’s hearing was destroyed by streptomycin after the war, leaving him bitter, isolated and paranoid, his career ruined.
Lorraine saw another consultant who agreed, despite the odds, to attempt the operation again in an NHS hospital, alongside the colleague who had tried the first operation. It was major surgery with clear risks of a dead ear, facial muscle collapse and a permanent loss of taste. Three days before Christmas the two surgeons had the heroism to attempt it; she, the bravery to face it.
Call me the unwanted love child of Steven Pinker and Pollyanna, but we’ve got to celebrate uplifting stuff
The operation took two hours. She was overjoyed to find out had been successful. Her ear will remain packed until February and she is dizzy and weak but bursting with gratitude.
Call me the unwanted love child of Steven Pinker and Pollyanna, but we’ve got to celebrate uplifting stuff like this. Pinker is right: we misinterpret ever-present harms as signs of how low the world has sunk, rather than how high standards have risen. So strong is the undertow of doom that we disregard the tens of thousands of NHS successes performed every day – procedures we’d regard as miracles 25 years ago.
By no coincidence at all, some timeless wisdom written in 2014 by the New Yorker magazine’s Adam Gopnik resurfaced as a viral social media post this Christmas. Our lack of historical sense encourages presentism, he says. We exaggerate problems out of all proportion to previous ones. We believe things are uniquely threatening rather than familiarly difficult. Every episode becomes an epidemic, every image a permanent injury, and each crisis a historical one.
He’s right. Head into 2026 with hope.
Photograph by Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty