Ananova:

A schoolboy was suddenly cured of his deafness after nine years when a cotton wool bud popped out of his ear.

Jerome Bartens, 11, had been unable to hear anything on his right side since he was a toddler, reports the Daily Mail.

"I was just playing pool in the church hall when my ear made a popping noise. It was very strange at first to be able to hear everything," he said.

"But now I'm getting used to it - it's great that people don't have to shout to me and that I don't have to turn my head all the time."

His family believe that he must have poked the bud in the ear at the age of two and the tip must have broken off the plastic stem.

The result was that he has always struggled at school, was constantly forced to turn up the volume of the television and music, and became used to everyone shouting at him.

But now he is waking up to a whole world of noise - while his father Carsten is demanding to know why medical experts failed to identify the problem for so long.

Mr Bartens, 45, said: "I had always suspected Jerome had stuck something in his ear when he was little and that was causing the problem.

"But the doctors and hearing specialists said it was wax and he would probably grow out of it. I am amazed they didn't spot something as obvious as a cotton wool bud."

Mr Bartens, an HGV driver from Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, has now complained to his GP and hearing specialists who examined Jerome over the years.