"I went to do the dishes and I filled up the kitchen sink with water. The water was so noisy; it was like Niagara Falls. I'd never heard it before, I didn't even know it made noise."

Yarroll was born with sensorineural hearing loss, a hereditary condition that damages the hair cells of the inner ear. Hearing aids allowed her to hear the basics of speech but she missed out on the subtler sounds, such as the rise and fall of musical notes or the hum of a washing machine. "There are so many sounds that other people take for granted but I didn't even know what they were," she says. "I never had an appreciation for music because I couldn't understand it. If I was out with a group having a conversation, I couldn't hear about 80 per cent of what was being said. So I missed out on a lot."

When Yarroll was 25, a skiing accident left her completely deaf in her right ear. She was still able to communicate by lip reading, using hearing aids and by concentrating strongly on the sounds she could hear. But in her 40s, a side effect from medication she was taking rapidly reduced the remaining hearing in her left ear.

"It was depressing. I hadn't had much hearing before that but it was all I had," she says. "It was affecting me most at work. I've got a lot of staff. People start to ignore you because you don't hear. Every day, you come home exhausted because you've got to strain to listen and you've got to lip read, you've got to observe."

"I went to do the dishes and I filled up the kitchen sink with water. The water was so noisy; it was like Niagara Falls. I'd never heard it before, I didn't even know it made noise."

Yarroll was born with sensorineural hearing loss, a hereditary condition that damages the hair cells of the inner ear. Hearing aids allowed her to hear the basics of speech but she missed out on the subtler sounds, such as the rise and fall of musical notes or the hum of a washing machine. "There are so many sounds that other people take for granted but I didn't even know what they were," she says. "I never had an appreciation for music because I couldn't understand it. If I was out with a group having a conversation, I couldn't hear about 80 per cent of what was being said. So I missed out on a lot."

When Yarroll was 25, a skiing accident left her completely deaf in her right ear. She was still able to communicate by lip reading, using hearing aids and by concentrating strongly on the sounds she could hear. But in her 40s, a side effect from medication she was taking rapidly reduced the remaining hearing in her left ear.

"It was depressing. I hadn't had much hearing before that but it was all I had," she says. "It was affecting me most at work. I've got a lot of staff. People start to ignore you because you don't hear. Every day, you come home exhausted because you've got to strain to listen and you've got to lip read, you've got to observe."

Riley, then 44, had just been promoted to state manager within a major oil company when a whitewater rafting accident - which was part of a company team-building exercise - kinked an artery in his neck and left him paralysed on his left side. "It was the same result as having a stroke," he says.

"I couldn't walk, I couldn't swallow, the whole list. The whole left side was affected."

At first Riley thought he would be back at work within a few months - until the father of three began to realise that his life had permanently changed.

Even simple tasks such as walking and driving were going to take years of rehabilitation. For the first six months, he couldn't even roll over in his hospital bed. His memory and concentration were affected - he would get confused when family and friends came to visit because he couldn't remember when he had last seen them.

His wife, Eva, quit her job as a secretary to care for her husband. The couple went from living on two full-time incomes to having to struggle on workers compensation payments. "It's very difficult because you lose all your security," says Riley, now 52. "It's cost us a fortune."

Learning to walk again took years, first on a tilt table to help Riley learn to put weight on his legs again, then stretching the muscles, then relearning to do each separate movement involved in walking and, finally, putting it all together to take a step.

Even now, Riley uses a walking stick and can't walk long distances. He has trouble concentrating for long periods of time and learning new things and his left side is still weaker than the right. But the doctors didn't believe he'd get even this far. "They are all surprised by the progress I've made," says Riley, who got his driver's licence back in 1999. "According to the textbooks, I shouldn't have got as far as I have. They've told me not to expect to get any better from here. But they don't know what will happen in the future."

One of the most exhilarating moments in his recovery came when he was able to walk out onto the golf course again, five years after the accident. But he quickly realised he would have to relearn how to play golf as well. "Golf has always been my big hobby," he says. "But that first time back, it was very hard and very frustrating. I used to be able to play well but to then hack it along the ground with one arm wasn't much fun. Also, towards the end, I would start to get tired and lose concentration."

Riley is now looking for part-time work as a bookkeeper. Until he finds a job, he is content to spend time with Eva and their children, Mark, 28, Keira, 26, and Melanie, 25. And there's always the course. "I taught myself to play golf one-handed and I'm getting pretty good now," he says. "My next goal is to play 18 holes so I can start to play in competitions again at the club."

It's been a hard road but Riley thinks the whole experience has given him a new perspective. "There are times when you get down and dirty on the world. But when you can pull yourself out of that feeling, I definitely appreciate the smaller things. Like walking again. And family, more than anything."

Edge of darkness
The sight of people's faces - complete with their wrinkles, their scowls, crow's feet and toothy smiles - was quite a shock to Stuart Kerry when he regained his sight in 1956. "When the bandages came off my eyes, I was at home with my sister-in-law," he recalls. "She was the first person I could examine in any detail. I looked at her face carefully and I still remember her blushing when she saw I was having a good look at her."

Kerry found the sight of people's faces both mesmerising and intense. "It was fascinating - the range of colours in people's hair and the different colours of people's skin," says the retired public servant. "I remember my three-year-old niece, Katherine, how beautiful her face was. Her eyes would twinkle - I can still remember the joy of that, it was just beautiful." He was also shocked at how wrinkled some people were. "They looked like shrivelled prunes!" he laughs.

Kerry had been legally blind since the age of 12 from a condition called conical cornea, where his corneas became progressively thinner until his sight was so blurred the world simply became unrecognisable. It was considered something of a minor medical miracle at the time when he was given bilateral cornea transplants - the Sydney man was among the first in Australia to have the operation in both eyes. Kerry, now 77, has had his sight back for 50 years but he still vividly recalls how his world changed when he was able to see again.

When he was blind, Kerry would have to listen very carefully to people and he had to take his time processing the information he heard. "I would concentrate on everything someone said," he says.

"I wouldn't be getting any clues from their body language or face. When I got my sight, I could see whether the person was smiling at me, frowning, whether they were pleased or angry. The information is instant but I didn't know how to process it. It was quite a shock to get all these instant impressions that I hadn't had to worry about before."

He was also accustomed to negotiating the world using the senses of hearing, smell and touch. It wasn't easy to let go of that once he regained his sight. "Well, I discovered, of course, that women had different figures," he says. One day he found himself sitting on a tram opposite a well-endowed woman. "You get used to using your hands as a blind person," he says. "I felt myself starting to sweat.

I then had to sit on my hands. Then, thank God, she got out. But the compulsion to reach out was very strong."

As time went on, Kerry began to read, play tennis, drive a car and be more social. He continued to work at the Royal Blind Society (which is now Vision Australia) where he had taught braille but regaining his sight put some of his colleagues offside. "Some of the people I worked with at the Blind Society didn't like it at all and said I changed for the worst. But I was on such a crest of a wave, none of that stopped me."

Kerry later completed a university degree, married his wife, Marjorie, and went on to work in the public service. In 1990, he was awarded an OAM for services to the community for his volunteer work for organisations including the Red Cross. "My personality changed," he says. "I was independent, I could go places and do things and I became more assertive."

One of Kerry's most vivid memories of regaining his sight came just before he had his bandages removed. He was staying at a house in Sydney's Drummoyne that he had been told had a view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the second storey.

"I desperately wanted to see the Harbour Bridge," he says. "I didn't want to be disappointed in front of my family if I couldn't so I waited until they were out and I went upstairs and lifted up the bandages. And there it was. That was beautiful, just beautiful. It seemed like magic."

By Claire Buckis
http://smh.com.au/news/health-and-fitness/some-kind-of-miracle/2006/02/01/1139379562275.html