Wow, you too? It's really amazing that there aren't more people like us - you are the first adult I've met who's been deaf and then hearing like me. I still have problems, but they're mainly auditory processing problems. I was a lip-reader, and I still feel like I need to watch someone talking in order to understand what they're saying. Phones drive me nuts!! If I can't see a person talking, it's hard for me to understand them.
I don't have hearing aids yet (I'm 43) but I probably will someday in the not-to-distant future. I'm really glad you found some that work for you!
The hardest part of deafness is the fact that no one knows your deaf - others just think you are stupid or rude. But there are so many things I learned from being deaf - and I know that even in the silence, life is beautiful. How many times I have heard people say "oh, I wouldn't want to live if I were handicapped". I know they are saying it out of ignorance, but I can testify - life was still fun, still wonderful, I still loved and was loved, even when I couldn't hear. Life was sometimes more difficult, but it was still worth living. Hearing is just one very small part of living, and I am still me - with or without it.
I hope that this girl felt the same. Witnesses say she was simply trying to cross the tracks - that means that she simply didn't catch those forward vibrations. So sad.
I seem to recall it was about 60% loss of hearing at the time. Caused by an inner ear infection after a really bad cold at the time, and I had to take antibiotics for several years after that just so it wouldn't happen again, and to build up my immune system.
By the time I was 6 years old, my parents had me screened for hearing aids, and not long after, I was enjoying hearing again. The most difficult part of that was having to go to speech pathologists right at the school for 6 years to speak and hear clearly, and all that ended right around age 12.
So, I even know how to read lips in difficult situations as well.
I got a pair of digital hearing aids a couple years ago, and those really help, even in noisy environments like restaurants, and work much better than the analog hearing aids I had used for years. They have like 10,000 different adjustments that the doctor can make, but he only adjusted 6 of those settings. (volume and equalization).
A couple years ago, I had an MRI and CAT scan done to see if I was a candidate for a cochlear implant. They concluded the bone structure was such that I could get those implants, but my hearing is right below the threshold of being a candidate. My hearing specialist said generally those with 80% or higher hearing loss are candidates, and mine was something like 65% in the right ear, and 72% in the left ear.
So he put me on hearing aids for now, and has me come in for a hearing screening once a year. So the implants are more or less still an option.