'I was told I had an ear infection, now I'm deaf'

When 18-year-old Ella Murphy felt her ears "pop" in the shower one morning and felt dizzy, her mum took her to hospital for emergency treatment.

Ella was diagnosed with labyrinthitis, a type of ear infection, at Barnsley Hospital.

She said she was told her hearing would recover on its own within eight weeks.

But five months later, she is permanently deaf in one ear, and a clinician has told her the damage could have been reversed if she had been given steroid treatment in time.

Mum Maria Penrose said "absolute panic" set in when her daughter said she felt dizzy and sick.

"We had no idea what was going on, it was scary," she said.

"Every time she moved, she was sick.

"She was saying she couldn't see, she couldn't hear, she was literally just sat staring towards the left hand side of her."

Barnsley Hospital discharged Ella with a prescription for anti-sickness tablets, but Maria was not satisfied with the treatment.

She paid for her daughter to see a private ear, nose, and throat specialist, Dr Andrew Parker, at Thornbury Hospital.

He diagnosed her with unilateral (affecting one ear) sensorineural hearing loss, which occurs when sound cannot reach the inner ear.

It can be caused by damage to tiny hair cells or the nerve which connects the ears to the brain.

In Ella's case, she had nerve damage.

"Straight away, Dr Parker asked if we'd been given steroids, which we hadn't," Maria said.

Oral or inner-ear injection steroids are a common treatment for sudden sensorineural hearing loss - but they need to be administered as soon as possible to be effective.

Ella was given a course of them by Dr Parker, but he told her it was most likely too late, and she never recovered hearing in her right ear.

She said it changed her life, and she had to take time off from her job as a dance teacher.

"I didn't want to go out because I couldn't hear anyone, I felt really awkward, when people were talking to me, I was ignoring them - it looked like I was being rude."

Maria said her daughter was "disorientated" because she "doesn't seem to understand where sounds are coming from", which meant she also had to cancel her driving test.

"Her balance is shocking," Maria said.

"She often bumps into people, she's fallen a couple of times, and she wanted to teach dancing, but she does struggle."

Ella now uses a hearing aid which cost £2,500 and will have to be replaced in five years.

"When I first got it, I did feel conscious, I just felt like everyone would be looking at me," she said.

"I thought it was older people that get hearing aids and can't hear, not young people."

She believed she would be able to adapt to her new life with the device, and she has since returned to work.

However, she said she was "really upset" that Barnsley Hospital did not give her steroids when she first went to A&E.

"I could've been able to hear, but the hospital didn't do anything about it."

Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said it was "very sorry to learn of Ella's hearing loss".

The spokesperson added: "We have looked into the case and the hospital's management of Ella's referral was in line with best practice and guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)."

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