I have progressive hearing loss that probably began very early and I was severely HOH/d/Deaf (I learned ASL at my integrated school). By the time I started college at age 18 I had pretty severe hearing loss, I was profoundly deaf 2.5 years later. I got my implant At age 27, activated a few weeks later when I was 28 and on activation day I could understand speech. I was working on my master's thesis at the time. I just put DVDs on for background noise (I need background noise to study or write) and after an hour or two I laughed, paused and realized that I laughed at a joke on the DVD. My head had been down, my mind busy doing calculations but somehow the helium voices made sense.
At my 3 month checkup I was able to understNd speech in noise even when the speech was 10-15dB more quiet than the noise. My audiologist said I was a rockstar but the booth isn't life.
I work in an ER and will hopefully be an ER doctor. Noise is everywhere. Sometimes I don't hear well but once I'm a doctor I can take charge of a room and ask that only one person speak at a time (my ER is really about not having a clear leader for codes).