All that i can ever be is nothing more than myself

with out my hearing aids, i basically cant hear anything. and would not be able to communicate orally. i like my hearing aids. i do. honsetly as much as i hate them. i love them. and i need them. my family doesnt sign. i dont have interpreters for school. i work as a teacher of hearing children. i need to be able to communicate orally sometimes. i am an expert lip reader, face reader, body language reader, so in tandem with my hearing aids i CAN communicate orally in certain situations. ie people looking directly at me, people not having beards, food in their mouths, accents, strange lip patterns, background noise etc.

also i like my hearing aids becuse it alerts me to some more environmental sounds. while i still cant hear people coming up behind me or other things happening, i do hear somethings, and i appreciate hearing those things becuse i get scared easily when something happens. for me they make me feel more secure and aware.

but thats just me. many deaf and hoh people are happy without hearing aids. and thats just them. its all personal preference really.

:)

some deaf people wear hearing aids, some do not.

keep in mind, hearing aids are NOT like glasses, they dont ‘fix’ a hearing loss.

lets start with the basics. deaf does not mean hear nothing, it is a variable line and changes for every deaf person.

sound is composed of two things volume and frequency. a hearing loss can be composed of different amounts of both. this can be measured on an audigram which charts a persons level of volume at which they can hear each frequency.

hearing aids can then be programed to fit each individual’s loss.

for people who have much more profound losses hearing aids can often take frequencies they may be completly missing and change them in to frequencies they CAN hear.

as well, just becuase someone can hear more, doesnt mean they can understand. for some deaf people, there may be alot of distortion. thats how it is for me. i have a severe to profound loss. but with my hearing aids some sound is brought up to a level my ears can detect, but there is little discrimination between things, its very mushy and blurry like being underwater. and i have a VERY difficult time taking sounds apart such as with background noise.

others can use hearing aids with quite good effect. their hearing loss being of a different kind.

for both kinds of people though, hearing aids bring ALL sound up. so while they make things louder they make EVERYTHING louder, so it is much more difficult to understand speech in certain situations.

lastly, there are people who are COMPLETLY deaf. its rare in the ways of deaf people. but i do know some. and HA would be useless on them.

hope that answers your question.