A female student discovered she had a strange illness after receiving a grade of 2 in Physics.

When Japanese high school student Tomoko Nakamura entered middle school in April 2024, she was confident about achieving high grades, having consistently been among the top five students in her middle school.

But her problems began when she realized she couldn't actually understand what her physics teacher was saying.

Nakamura (a pseudonym) has normal hearing and can converse with friends and family. However, she cannot understand what her physics teacher is saying, only his tone and volume.

A 17-year-old girl living in Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan, was diagnosed with "hearing impairment," a condition for which diagnostic guidelines only began to be established in Japan in March 2024.

According to some estimates, people who have difficulty understanding speech may make up as much as 1% of the population.

Nakamura could still understand her other teachers. Only her physics teacher—a man in his late 50s or early 60s—was the one whose "voice seemed to disappear" the moment she heard him.

"I could hear the sounds but couldn't understand any of the words," she said.

After scoring only 2 out of 100 on her second-semester physics final exam, she was very confused. “I don’t know what to do. There’s nothing to do.”

Around this time, she read online about hearing loss symptoms. Nakamura consulted her mother and went to see a specialist, who diagnosed her with this condition, also known as auditory processing disorder.

People with hearing difficulties may have normal hearing test results but struggle to understand conversations that are noisy, fast-paced, or involve many people. It is thought that some type of impairment occurs in the brain during language processing, but the exact cause remains unknown.

Symptoms vary from person to person, and how sound is perceived also changes depending on the environment.

For example, some people hear ambient noise mixed in with what they hear, others only hear fragmented conversations, and some, like Nakamura, cannot understand certain voices.

Nakamura occasionally struggles to understand conversations. Most of the time, this happens when she's chatting with friends, so she simply asks them to repeat. When talking to many people, she sometimes feels left out, but she'll just laugh it off and say, "My hearing is like an old woman's."

If she tries her best to concentrate while the physics teacher is speaking, sometimes she can understand. But when she does, she can't take notes of anything. And her ability to compensate for this through homework and reading the textbook is also limited.

Hearing difficulties are not a serious condition, but there is also no cure. Experts suggest that it's important to create a supportive environment for communication while learning how to effectively manage the disorder.

Strategies include using noise-canceling headphones to reduce distracting noise, or apps that convert conversations into text.

Even without using technology, simply speaking slowly or making eye contact while talking can help people with hearing difficulties understand each other better, experts say.

In November 2024, Nakamura requested permission to record her physics teacher's lecture so she could transcribe it using an app. However, her school refused, with her homeroom teacher stating that it would violate the privacy rights of students asking questions.

Nakamura and her mother began filing complaints with the school, explaining the hearing difficulties, coping mechanisms, and how the lecture-recording apps worked. They also contacted the education department.

It took about five months. Gradually, the teachers began to understand and learn about hearing loss through videos and articles written by experts. Eventually, Nakamura was allowed to record physics lessons and use an app to transcribe the lectures.

She was very pleased with the results when she used it in March 2025. "I could hear everything my physics teacher said!"

For the first time in a year, she was able to understand the lessons, but she regretted the lost years.

"That's because hearing loss isn't widely known, and because at first glance I don't look like I have a disability," she said. "There must be other people struggling like me."

People with hearing impairments have formed support groups across Japan since around 2018. There are now 10 groups nationwide.

Diagnosed with this disorder in 2018, Yoshitada Watanabe is a representative of a group in the Kinki region, which includes Osaka and Hyogo.

“ Government agencies and schools are too focused on precedent,” Watanabe said. “But hearing loss only had diagnostic criteria established last year, so of course there’s no precedent.”

The symptoms often go unnoticed. In March, Kyodo News conducted a survey of 147 individuals who reported that they or a family member had hearing difficulties.

The survey revealed that in the past year, 29 people – representing 20% of the total – experienced difficulties at work or in their studies.

"Many people only realize this after they start working. They join the company in April and are reprimanded by their boss or senior colleagues for being 'slow to learn' or 'unwilling to listen.' That's when they start to investigate and discover they have difficulty with their listening skills," Watanabe said.

However, very few medical facilities are able to diagnose patients with hearing difficulties, and diagnosis can take several months.

"During that time, problems caused by hearing difficulties continued daily. There were cases where people had to quit their jobs because of this," Watanabe said.

(Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/nu-sinh-phat-hien-minh-mac-can-benh-ky-la-after-receiving-grades-for-2-physics-subjects-post1082382.vnp