r/hardofhearing

24 years old M . I have been having progressive hearing loss since april more in my left then my right . All my hearing tests are normal . I used to be able to hear everything and everyone really clearly even from 20-40 m away now ringtones , doorbells and all high pitch noises I almost dont notice . My voice is fading away as well I struggle to hear myself clearly . I am losing hope 😭. I am still waiting on a mri and a abr but I am scared to never recover my hearing . I cant even hear the car on the hightway .yet they tell me my hearing is normal . Does someone have similar experience . The worst is it keeps going down I have lost so much in the last 6 months I dont even work at a loud place or listen to loud music . Tried prednisone didnt work , didnt change a thing maybe even made it worst . I ordered two otc hearing aids that I am waiting on to try to see if they would help

I’ve been wearing Oticon, in the canal, HA’s for eleven years. for the past year I’ve been trying to purchase new. I tried Costco. three different types, adjustments on each pair and ended up returning them each time. I learned my lesson and went to the audiologist who works with my ENT group. Oticon in the ear model is a great fit and good sound quality in one ear but it’s been months trying to get the other ear to fit and sound right. it’s been too tinny, too uncomfortable and then completely ineffective because the sound of my own voice would reverberate to an intolerable degree.

Currently they’re remaking the mold so for the last two weeks I’ve been “test driving the new Zeal by Oticon. it’s a bit tinny and I even more so if I raid my voice a little. I do like the rechargeable feature and the fact that I'm can use the phone and listen to podcasts, music, or social media or news clips. They’re big though. I’m not used to HA’s that just out weirdly. it’s not that they’re super noticeable. just uncomfortable and they make my ears hurt where they rest on the outside. 🙁

If anyone has experience with Zeal v. Oticon in the canal and can share their knowledge I would REALLY appreciate it. When the remade device comes in I have just a short time to be eligible to make an exchange for Zeal if I choose that.

I am a 20-year-old Brazilian woman who is deaf/HoH. Well, a good part of my father's side of the family is also deaf/HoH; I was born with progressive hearing loss of unknown origin and I had surgery at age 5 and will probably have another one. I recently had an audiometry test, and my hearing had worsened significantly compared to the last test two years ago. This came as a huge blow to me, and I’ll explain why. To start with, I never received support at school—except during high school—and my hearing impairment was always treated as a matter of how much effort I put in, as if that alone could magically fix everything.

My father has the same condition I do and has currently lost all hearing in one ear, yet throughout my life, he was always very harsh about my inability to hear—to the point where my ENT doctor had to call him out on it. My father used to scold me (and still does) and cover his mouth while speaking, making lip-reading difficult, as if that would somehow restore my hearing. I don't blame him, though; that’s simply how he was raised—as a 50-year-old man from the countryside. But the point I want to make is that my family doesn't "belong" to the Deaf community; instead, they view their impairment as something terrible, because that is how *they* were treated.

My grandmother never even told my aunt that she wears hearing aids. She is a devout Pentecostal, so I grew up hearing some pretty heavy things—like "your hearing difficulty is a hereditary curse"—which caused me to internalize terrible things about myself and my hearing. My oldest aunt doesn't use oral communication either, and my grandmother makes all her decisions for her; furthermore, she doesn't know LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language) because, according to my grandmother, God will make her hear and speak again—and her doctor even claims that learning sign language would make her "spoiled" or lazy.

Well, you’ve seen the chaotic environment I grew up in (and yes, I go to therapy.); all my life, I’ve had to bend over backwards to fit into the world and struggle to make others understand me. The result? Years of bullying and social exclusion, because people hate having to repeat themselves. I started wearing hearing aids in late 2022, and that social aspect improved significantly.

The problem, however, is that my hearing has deteriorated sharply in a short time: two years ago, it was conductive, but now it’s mixed—I went from 43 dB in one ear and 46 dB in the other to 50 dB in both. To make matters worse, my hearing has suddenly deteriorated significantly over the last few days—I don't know if I’ve suffered sudden hearing loss. The point is, I’m losing my hearing at a frightening rate.

When I got the audiometry results, I was devastated—not because I hate the condition itself, but because I’m terrified of going through everything I endured in childhood all over again. I might have to learn LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language), and that’s fine, but the realization that the world is going to hit me even harder makes me feel like I’m grieving while still alive. And as I mentioned, I have no connection to the Deaf community, which makes me feel isolated; I have no one to talk to about this, and my family treats my pain like a joke. Honestly, I don’t know what to do or how to cope with this. I’m sorry for the long post, but I needed to vent somewhere.

I always thought I was just bad at meetings. I would leave feeling tired, but I assumed it was because meetings are boring. Then I realized I was spending the entire time doing mental calculations: Who said that? Was that directed at me? Did I miss a question? Should I ask them to repeat? After using hearing aids, meetings still aren’t my favorite thing 😂 But they don’t drain me the same way. I’m not spending all my energy trying to follow along. I can actually focus on the conversation. For people who work, what was the biggest difference you noticed after getting hearing aids?

I've been hard of hearing my whole life basically - have had hearing aids since I was a little kid.

I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions or tips/tricks for tools they find helpful at work. I am in and out of meetings basically all day on Teams. I find the "live captions" helpful to an extent, but not 100% useful. wondering if anyone has any experience with useful tools that help them with meetings and such?

Also, I don't want to be a bother to my colleagues but I'm also super tired of people approaching me in person to tell me to do something. I often spend so much of my energy trying to catch everything they are saying that I don't grasp the full context. Has anyone had experience having conversations at work asking to be approached for taskings in a written manner only?

I haven’t had a hearing test in years, not because I didn’t want one, or didn’t try, but because the last time I went and got a referral, it kept being misfiled, therefore they were unable to set up the appointment before the referral expired. I just haven’t gotten around to trying again since then. But it’s been way too long (around seven years since my last appointment, and around ten years since my last appointment that I consider to have actually given accurate results for my baseline; my ears did something weird during both of the tests after the one ten years ago, and so while I consider those results accurate for the day they were taken, I don’t consider them accurate for my hearing baseline) and I have definitely lost more hearing in my left ear at least, possibly (probably) the right, too.

It would be really nice to actually know where my hearing is at...I just hate the idea of going through the referral process all over again and then not having it processed properly *again*. Is it permitted to set up an appointment without one? Does it depend on the office?

Hi. I am a hearing mother of 2, and my 3 month-old was diagnosed with moderate hearing loss. I am French and I teach English in highschool. My mother has lived in the UK for 10 years and has become British. She has now retired but intends to stay there. We visit twice a year, but she comes often. However she only speaks French with my first born. I regret not having taught him English as a baby (OPOL strategy) because now he can't interact with other children at the park when we go, and basically doesn't understand a thing in English. When I was pregnant with my second, I told myself I would speak to her in English, but now we've found out she's hard of hearing I'm not sure it's a good idea. She has bilateral moderate hearing loss (50-60 dB). She'll be getting hearing aids next month at 4 months old. Do you think it's possible to learn 2 spoken langages as a HoH baby? We will also try to sign but we have everything to learn.

So I was born with hearing loss due to a birth defect and have been slowly losing my hearing over the years (I’m almost 20 now and need hearing aids). As a child, due to that same defect, I was unable to talk/make noise until I was old enough to get corrective surgery and YEARS of physical and speech therapy to learn how to talk. So before that, I used sign as my main form of communication.

But here’s the thing: my parents were both older and the children of immigrants. They were very much of the mindset of “if our child is different it will be a burden” so the moment that I started being able to make noise, they stopped using sign with me and pushed me to learn to talk—I still have trouble speaking clearly all these years later and have lost my knowledge of sign language. I also wasn’t allowed hearing aids until I turned 18 and could choose for myself because my parents rather tried for every corrective surgery the doctors could think of, even ear drum reconstruction (which I told them I would not get done).

Anyways, in the past year I’ve been trying to learn ASL as my doctors say I may lose almost all of my hearing once I get older and I’d rather know sign now then try to learn it then. I’m taking classes in college and have gotten okay, I know I still need more practice, but this is my dilemma: I can’t have a single conversation with someone hearing where I’m not constantly asking them “huh?” Or “what did you say?” And I have accommodations to have captions and to sit up front in class to hear my professors, and all that jazz. I’m the only HoH person in my school’s ASL society and we work with our school’s ASL Professors to try to get more people involved in the program/aware of deaf culture, but at my every chance to volunteer or spread awareness, my professors say I’m “not Deaf enough.”

I understand that my experience isn’t the same, but it’s not like I’m hearing just because I stumble my way through conversations (I use context clues or lip read about half the time if I’m not constantly asking people to repeat themselves) and I understand there’s a culture side to growing up deaf or with a deaf family member that I won’t have, but it’s not as if I had the same childhood as someone hearing either.

I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else who’s HoH or who’s lost hearing later in life feels the same way. Perhaps it’s just my Professors but it feels like there’s some kind of bar you have to reach to be accepted. I mean, do I have to wait until my 30s or 40s when I’m projected to have lost the majority of my hearing? I’m trying to learn and I don’t want to be rude, but it just becomes frustrating when I can relate to so many of the problems around not being able to hear like everyone else and yet I’m told I’m still not Deaf enough to participate in deaf events/try to find a community with people who face similar struggles.

My friends and family are learning sign because they know it will be necessary to be able to communicate with me once I’m older. My sister surprised me by having taught my nephew my sign name while I was away at college. I have days where I get tired of my hearing aids and just either sign at people out and about or am able to have short convos with my friends if we’re in a quiet place. I have an app to give me captions when on phone calls because it’s hard to hear over the phone. All of these things just make me feel so isolated from the Hearing community but when I try to go to the Deaf community (particularly in my school) it’s like I’m suddenly not qualified enough.

I suppose part of this is me venting, but I’m genuinely curious if anyone else has felt this way/is there anything I can do to remedy this? I’m trying to get better at sign but it’s just so frustrating when all my experiences are deemed inadequate just because my proficiency at the language isn’t there yet.

I know I'm hard of hearing and got blue tooth type hearing aids. I wear these pins/badges on my work apron, to let people know I'm hard of hearing and know ASL, so they're aware and speak clearly to me. But there's few times I misunderstood people or didn't understand them clearly. I have this Transcribe App, but I don't want to be wasting time to find it on my Iphone and have it ready, are there other Apps that's ready to use on the IPhone? We don't really do meetings at work, except during the holidays, for fun events. That when I struggle a bit, cuz those sitting bit farther are hard for me to understand well. I wish there's a way I can get ASL Intepreter, but having a job coach from this other program, it would be confusing to have 2 people their w me. I joined this new program called EDD GLAD, they're helping me to find jobs, and they know ASL. The other program I'm in, are all hearing and for special needs people, feel like I am in a wrong program or something. So yeah, any better apps I can use on my iPhone besides the Transcribe App? Even a few time at animal shelter volunteer orientation, I struggle to understand during the orientation. It like I need a better accommodation or something (that why even when I volunteer at this animal shelter, I avoid porgrams that use phone and walkie talkies, and limit interaction w people)

I've been pretty happy with my Nadias but have decent insurance and open to a better hearing UX. I'm Severe (L) Profound (R).

Anyone moved to the Eon series and are they powerful enough?

Alternatively anyone aware of Phonak plan a next gen BTE. I have no problem with a BTE and just want the best, and simplest hearing UX.

https://preview.redd.it/hznp1u5zyzsh1.png?width=1430&format=png&auto=webp&s=e31d4a85b29fd967555f97d518257a78a6e6c540

im hard of hearing. so are my two friends. one of them speaks very fluently in english, can talk normally on phone calls with no issue and speaks properly. occasionally struggles to understand videos without subtitles but rarely

the other friend however, despite living in an english speaking country for more than a decade, still struggles to speak english, cant do phone calls & struggles to pronounce words.

im in between. i moved to an english speaking country when i was 12 & ofc had no idea of english. but i worked very very hard and i got better and better. now i go to a top 30 uni studying stem. but this is it. my social life sucks , cant do phone calls and prefer one on one meeting Instead of groups.

so i was wondering if hard of hearing has categories, like a spectrum? Why do we have diffrnet experiences even tho we have similar hearing loss ? My friend can do phone calls but I cant . Why is that ? Am I dumb ?

F(59) here, born with malformed ossicles with means conductive hearing loss since birth. I work in front store of a cvs. I got so frustrated and angry with hearing people today. Im tired of asking people over 2 to 5 times to speak up. Tired of people telling me to wear hearing aids when I've been wearing hearing aids since I was 8 years old.

Tired of these old,late deafened people thinking they have worn hearing aids longer than me. Oh, you have been wearing hearing aids for three years, try over 50 years, you're not special.

Sorry I needed to vent.

So this just hit me with regards to another person having to learn two languages in the same sub.

Honestly, for others and most of y'all living abroad, it's pretty easy to learn other foreign languages like French or Spanish, because well, they have alphabets in them, and it gets easy to enunciate and pronounce the words.

Until you study in India.

I wanted to take up Hindi and French as my languages, and was offered that during my college's admission time, to which they stated I'd be able to take French during my second year.

It was just hindi in first year, and then came the second year, where I was eagerly waiting to learn french after a long gap of four years learning it back when I was in 10th grade.

Imagine my damned horror when I was told to go to Tamil class instead of French, BECAUSE APPARENTLY THERE WERE NO FRENCH STAFF?!

AND ON TOP OF THAT, I'M LEARNING A DAMN NEW LANGUAGE WHICH I'VE NO EXPERIENCE ON, NOR CAN I SPEAK IT OR NOR DO I HAVE PARENTS OR FAMILY MEMBERS WHO SPEAK THE DAMN LANGUAGE. [THE WORDS EVEN SOUND A LOT DIFFERENT AND IS HARD TO INTERPRET]

yeah it's safe to say that I've failed my first ever Tamil exam, and is prolly the first exam I've failed in my life too. I didn't even bother telling it to my collegues cuz I got no friends really, so just said it to my Discord friends rather, and well bam.

Tamil sucks, and I hate my damned college for forcing me to learn it.

Finished, thanks for reading till the end I guess.