Otosclerosis

In the middle ear, hidden deep behind the eardrum, sit three tiny bones — the smallest bones in your body. They are called the malleus, incus, and stapes. Their function is poetic: they translate vibration. Sound that strikes your eardrum is passed on by these three small bones, amplified, and conducted into the inner ear. There, movement becomes nerve impulse, nerve impulse becomes sound, sound becomes meaning.

In otosclerosis, these small bones lose their mobility. New bone tissue grows where fine vibration should be possible. The stapes — the last bone, the one that must be the most mobile — is slowly fixed, walled in, immobilised. And with each fraction of a millimetre it loses, the world becomes a little quieter — not abruptly, not dramatically, but gradually, over years.