Hi deafdude: In response to your post ....
Yes, I am "late-deafened." I'm 53 yr. old now, and started wearing HA's when I was 37 (though I was aware I had some hearing loss well before then). My loss is primarily sensory-neural, and it has been progressive. My mom suffers from hearing loss, and so did other members of her family.
At first I just need an aid in my right ear, then my left ear started to decline as well. I was able to get along and function pretty normally with aided hearing, needing to upgrade to strong aids over the years (my most recent aids were phonak Eleva's).
My left ear was always the "better" one, and I was able to get by (with some difficulty of course) until spring 2008. In May 2008 I had bypass surgery, and experienced a significant drop in my hearing ability around that time. Hard to say if it happened before the surgery, because of the surgery, or what.
My loss really became noticeable right after I had an angiogram, which was about 2 weeks prior to my surgery. At first I thought my left HA was just malfunctioning, but it wasn't; my left-side hearing had declined, and was now as bad or maybe even worse than the right side.
Anyway, the result was that I could no longer use a regular phone anymore, and was no longer able to understand or follow a normal conversation. It was mostly just muffled sounds coming through my HA's.
I don't have a recent audiogram, but when I started consulation for the CI my hearing was tested, and the audi said my WRS (word recognition score) was 15% while aided with the Eleva's. I was also tested wearing a stronger aid (Ph. Naida), which bumped my WRS up to around 25 - 30%.
She said that still put me in the range to qualify for a CI, and after a great deal of deliberation and research (including scrutinizing the alldeaf boards), I decided to go ahead with the implant.
Right now it feels like I definitely made the right decision.
