With the loss of hair cells you also loose clarity. So what it the point of me having residual hearing if speech sounds like gibberish?
Until your hearing loss progresses to where mine is, you will never understand nor can you ever compare your hearing to mine! You can not speak for me because you don't have my degree of hearing loss! But anyway even the amount of residual hearing I do have, I still consider important because stem cells will be able to use that and improve upon it. You do great with new HAs. I will need stem cells before I can do great like you do. A CI won't even come close to what you hear. I want better so I wait for stem cells.
Generally, because it is not useful. What good is hearing a loud enviromental sound, if you are never able to understand language?
It is about what you believe is important. I believe it is more important for my child to be able to understand spoken language than to be able to hear me clap very loudly, next to her, with her aids off.
I hear lots of environmental sounds and I understand language just fine. The only "problem" is when people are being rude and don't look at me in the eye when I communicate so I can read their lips. Unaided, I can hear loud claps. Aided I hear so much more than that.
Exactly.
I do not feel it is important for my daughter to speak a spoken language. As long as she is confidently fluent in her chosen method of communication (ASL) and literate in at least 1 written language (preferably more, but I won't get my hopes up yet), I will be beyond pleased.
I would consider it important for my future son/daughter to speak clearly and be able to communicate. But I am fine if it's due to reading lips. Who is to say that lipreading is inferior to listening? I can understand over 80% speech by reading lips which is comparable to what those with CI understand by listening. Ok so I can't hear phones, I don't care about phones. Way too many telemarketers and I know people who stop using the phone alltogether because of this. Lipreading is just another language like sign language and is in no way inferior! You are a big fan of sign language just like I am a big fan of reading lips. There's many ways to communicate!