Sorry to hear Salty. As of this year I too have faced hearing loss. Currently, my doctor is trying medications to see if we can actually stop the cause of the hearing loss. The first medication had no effect regarding my ears, but did have positive effects in other areas. So, I'll have to talk with my other doctors about it. Since, my ear doctor took me off it to try another medication. This medication, I can feel a difference, but can not hear a difference....and the dizziness doesn't happen as often. So, yay! He is treating it as an auto-immune disorder within the ear (although, he admits that he maybe wrong and an additional MRI maybe required). He did indicate that the chances of me regaining my hearing is slim.

I have to admit it's frustrating and very much an adjustment. The different sounds that I can hear within my ear can be very distracting and at times painful. I started with hearing music in my right ear. Now the music stopped and I can hear a rhythmic swoosh (I'm pretty sure it's my heart beat) in my left ear. Every now and then I get a rumble or roaring sound that is so loud and painful it makes me grab my head and drops me to my knee.

Since, December I have had my hearing tested 3 times and each time I have lost more and more hearing. Once the cause is stabilized then he can recommend the right hearing aids. No point of spending money to turn around and have it change again and require something different, or worse, find that aids wont help at all.

I now find myself watching for hand gestures, looking at lips and such to try and keep up with what is being said, but it's tiring. The crew has been supportive by trying to make sure they look at me to speak, and to talk as clearly as they can. I can hear higher pitches easier that low. So, lucky for me when they try to speak louder they (not everyone I know) actually seem to naturally bring the pitch up. However, when they are tired or have a cold....I might catch 40-50% of the sentence...the rest is a guessing game of reason, logic, and well, knowing the person I'm talking too. So, frustrating.

This thread has been encouraging to read in many ways...I am grateful it's here.

the daughter of deaf parents she has the gift of singing...god works in mysterious ways....

Happy Deaf Awareness Week!!

the barista is an interpreter on video at the drive thru to accommodate deaf customers

I went to see Spring awakening, it was great!

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I first got interested in sign language in my twenties, partly out of a general curiosity about languages in general, and partly because something (I can't recall what precisely now) had made me aware of how few hearing people could communicate well with deaf people, and I determined to see if I could learn some sign language, just as I could manage at least a few basics in a few other languages.

I enrolled for lessons, and learnt the distinctions between fingerspell, signed English and BSL (British Sign Language). I went to the local deaf club, which was a startling experience, being the one who had the difficulty communicating! It was interesting seeing how conversations flowed around me, how people gained each others attention and dealt with interjections. I started watching a program called "See Hear" and via that encountered signed poetry, which, me dabbling in poetry, was amazing to me, a whole new way of expressing poetry with gesture as well as signs... beautiful!

I worked as a mainframe computer operator back then, with the machines in a noisy air-conditioned room that we'd have to go into to change tapes and occasionally use the terminals in there too. Neither I nor my colleague Carol could make ourselves heard over the noise from more than a few feet away, so I suggested one day that maybe we could use a little sign language to help for when we needed to communicate when at opposite ends of the machine room, instead of running back and forth. She was up for it, and limited and basic as our use of signs in that job was, it workedand helped a lot.

I wanted to see if I could get to interpreter level, but sadly my life took a huge unexpected sharp turn, and I never got beyond fingerpell and the very limited vocabularly I'd learnt. Finding recently that the hearing in my right ear is starting to decline nudged me to remembering about BSL and I bought a BSL-English basic vocab book. I doubt I'll ever get fluent in BSL unless I get to interact much with native signers again (maybe when I retire?), but well, one day it may come in useful, I just enjoy learning anyway, and it's a beautiful language!

I have to say though that ASL looks very different - I couldnt understand a thing said in ASL in videos linked above!

We have a deaf individual in one of our residences at work and we just started a 10 week ASL training for all of the staff and his wife. The first class was this past wednesday and based on the feedback I received from everyone, including the individual and the trainer, I may take the course the next time I set it up. I love that the first class focused on the individual, his needs, and the culture of the deaf community, which is so important for the staff to know. I don't think I have ever seen a staff member so excited about training.