Deaf or Hard of Hearing

[Ginny Potter]

I'm not sure how many of you know about the Deaf Culture but I'm willing to share my experience with this wonderful forum! So without further do.

There's so much more to hearing loss than anyone knows. So there are alot of languages in this world. So there are alot of sign language.

so the image below is what I currently have. I wanted to clarify that if any of you didn't know.

 

[-Apples-]

I have a hearing impediment. I don’t need hearing aids yet, but I’ve always had trouble with my left ear.

 

[Ginny Potter]

Interesting. I'm Deaf in both ears but wear a cochlear implant on my left side

 

[SkyKnight03]

I have chronic tinnitus. I've never known silence.

I can mostly block it out with headphones though.

 

[oak]

My ear doctor told me last time I need a hearing aid for my one ear but I declined. The world is already loud enough for me

 

[Ginny Potter]

My ear doctor told me last time I need a hearing aid for my one ear but I declined. The world is already loud enough for me

That I can understand

Post automatically merged: Mar 3, 2026

I have chronic tinnitus. I've never known silence.

I can mostly block it out with headphones though.

I heard of a pill you can take that suppose to help with that

 

[spawnpoint]

i also have chronic tinnitus, i have since i was little. i think it might be a side effect of having visual snow. other than that i feel like my hearing is normal? ive never gotten it checked out so i can't really tell

 

[AccfSally]

I have complete hearing loss in my left ear. It was like this since I was a little girl...probably since the day I was born. Since I'm getting older, I sometimes get a ring in my right ear.

 

[Ginny Potter]

I have complete hearing loss in my left ear. It was like this since I was a little girl...probably since the day I was born. Since I'm getting older, I sometimes get a ring in my right ear.

I know that feeling very well. It's so annoying

 

[QueenCobra]

My aunt has been deaf since birth. The main reason my dad’s family moved where we live now is so she could attend a deaf school.

She signs and reads lips, but also has an app that transcribes what people are saying around her. It seems helpful.

 

[Ginny Potter]

I was born hearing but started losing my hearing when I was like 4 or 5. The older I got the more I was losing my hearing. I got my ci back in 2003. I grew up with deaf corporation who didn't do right by me or my peers

 

[AccfSally]

I have complete hearing loss in my left ear. It was like this since I was a little girl...probably since the day I was born. Since I'm getting older, I sometimes get a ring in my right ear.

I forgot to add. They once put me in a class back in Middle school for kids who were deaf or hard of hearing. They gave me a hearing aid for that ear along with a sign language book, I have no clue what happened to it today. I was only in that class for like a year, I guess they thought I didn't need it since my right ear (to them) was really good and stuff.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I had an uncle who had hearing loss due to an illness during WWII and the medical care he needed was hard to get. I never really saw him too often because he lived in Taiwan his entire life and my dad moved to the US permanently in the 70s. I also had speech therapy with a kid who was partially deaf for two years and he was verbal. He was a pretty nice person who really liked Buffy and Charmed. I also knew someone who was deaf and nonverbal and he communicated only through sign language and he had an interpreter. I’ve always been fascinated watching people using sign language.

 

[Giddy]

I'm hard of hearing in both ears, and had hearing aids for both ears as a child till teenage years.

It was never caught on that I couldn't hear correctly, until a teacher at my school noticed and informed my parents.
I still think I still have my old hearing aids before I stopped wearing them (nosy places like the classroom just cancelled out my need to hear a teacher), and still have the hearing aid bag that used to carry all the batteries, pumper etc.
It's a cute bag with a baby elephant on the front.

I remember the days where they would test my hearing, damn beep tests. And making the molds, always made my ears tickle. Getting the hearing aids were fun, I could tell they were trying to make them more fun for kids.
I can't remember if the mold was something they could make into a fun colour or the metal bits that go around the ear. I think you could have little stickers on the thing that goes over the ear too.

What my problem was I was losing some hairs in my cochlear, which if some people didn't know, the hair in your coclear cannot grow back.
And when you can't hear certain sounds, accents, etc could cause you to mispronouce words, which I had trouble with as well. Since there were certain 'th' sounds my ears weren't picking up very well.

I still find listening to certain things hard. If it's a loud place with loads of people, don't expect me to actually hear anything.
But one thing I noticed was listening to a new song, that I couldn't piece the lyrics well until I saw the lyrics so my brain did most of the work.

I still like having subtitles, think I had some as a kid, and remember seeing the person in the corner of the screen as a child. Not entirely realising what they were there for.
I never had sign language lessons as a kid, but I did a few years back find a short course teaching British Sign Language. Really need to get back into that again.
My teacher was amazing. He even went to Japan to teach deaf kids sign language and had to learn their sign language since it's different. (There's an anime film called A Silent Voice, where the main character is deaf, dealing with bullying etc really good film that I even recommended my Sign language teacher)

A learnt a lot from my lessons (need to reremember them ack), basics and such, but our teacher also gave us more facts and such while we were learning.
How certain signs have changed over the years for cultural appropriation issues, this may depends on the person but speaking slower actually makes it harder for people who are deaf/hard of hearing to understand. And that people who are deaf/hard of hearing it's harder to socialise and are more prone to anxiety, fear and loneloness.

And I feel bad Sign language has never been a language lesson in schools, I mean when I was at primary school they never taught any languages until I got to Secondary where it was French and Spainsh + Latin or Mandarin if you already knew French or Spainish; but nowdays they are being taught at a younger age, so Sign Language should be apart of it too.

I also suffer from Tinitus, and when I was teen age I had it mainly in both ears. (I vaguely remember oneof my beep tests I was dealing with it and I should've told them to stop the test, but never did, also remember having tinitus so bad in a counciling session I couldn't hear anything other than the ringing.)
I can't tell is Tinitus is connected to stress or not :/

 

[Ginny Potter]

My experience growing up being surrounded by Deaf kids and hearing kids. I didn't know where I belong because I cam do both worlds. Both are the same bur so different because sign language is a silent language and when you're signing to someone. They pay attention to the body language, the way you sign, and they read your facial expression.

 

[skarmoury]

Thank you for sharing this thread. By the way, World Hearing Day just happened yesterday (March 3) so this is a very timely thread.

I'm an ear doctor currently in training, and right now I'm thinking after my training, I'll take masters in clinical audiometry to be able to prescribe hearing aids to people. I'm inspired by our chairperson who has that masters, I've watched him do clinics before and it's inspiring to see him and his team help out people who are hard of hearing. On our end, in training we're tasked to read the specifics of the hearing tests so we can assess where the hearing problems is coming from. We also grade the severity of hearing based on thresholds and frequencies.

Mayhaps if anyone has questions you can quote me, haha. I like studying and educating people!

Regarding tinnitus, lots of things can cause it. From impacted earwax to loss of blood supply to dizziness/vertigo to infections. I sometimes have episodes of brief tinnitus, only for a few seconds, that I think is related to headaches haha.

I can't remember if the mold was something they could make into a fun colour or the metal bits that go around the ear.

Not sure about other places but for us the mold we use is red, primarily because the clay thingy we have is color red, haha. I think you could have different colors if you used dye but we don't have dye sadly.

 

[Ginny Potter]

I remember the days where they would test my hearing, damn beep tests. And making the molds, always made my ears tickle. Getting the hearing aids were fun, I could tell they were trying to make them more fun for kids.
I can't remember if the mold was something they could make into a fun colour or the metal bits that go around the ear. I think you could have little stickers on the thing that goes over the metal part.

A learnt a lot from my lessons (need to reremember them ack), basics and such, but our teacher also gave us more facts and such while we were learning.
How certain signs have changed over the years for cultural appropriation issues, this may depends on the person but speaking slower actually makes it harder for people who are deaf/hard of hearing to understand. And that people who are deaf/hard of hearing it's harder to socialise and are more prone to anxiety, fear and loneloness.

so these two i wanna add my own two cents. I hated when they did the mold because I had to try not to itch because it tickles my ears. I remember getting those mold and you can do whatever color you wanted and having stickers in them. Those were cool. The metal part you're talking about is the behind the ear where you can turn your hearing aid on or off and adjust the volume.

For some speaking slower helps but not for me. I would actually have to ask a person to repeat sometimes because I may miss the meaning

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I honestly like watching movies and tv shows with subtitles because that way I know that I won’t miss any important dialogue or can understand what was said if it was said in an unclear way. And sometimes the people typing up the subtitles are clearly having fun with it and start making stuff up.

 

[Ginny Potter]

My mom doesn't like the cc. I use it anyways so I have the cc on my TV and since it's not connected to the other tvs. She's fine with it. I leave it in because there are times I just wanna be completely Deaf

 

[RoxiePico]

I've had constant tinnitus since I could remember, to the point I need white noise at night to sleep. (It's a piercing high-pitched whine for me, sort of like a CRT TV booting up) I also have auditory processing issues, so I can't distinguish seperate sounds or process words spoken to me easily, especially in loud and bustling places. For that I use subtitles on anything I watch.