Certainly. I was born with a servre to profound deafness. My loss was around 70 to 100 dbs. It was mostly in the profound range. There is no history of deafness in my family; my deafness is due to the Rubella virus that I contracted before I was born. My mother says I had the second worst hearing loss in my class. In recent years it has been around 85 to 115 range. Most of my loss was in the 115 range. I think I may have had a sudden hearing loss at 19 as I started to have problems with recruiment around that time. I wish I had taken an audiogram so I'd know for sure.
I was raised orally till I was 13 years old when I first learned sign from a friend. My parents have told me that the experts told them not to let me use sign as it was considered a barrier to speech. I was enrolled in a self contained oral program from the time I was 18 months old to 3rd grade and then mainstreamed in public school in the 4th grade to 6 grade. The oral program had no permant building so we'd go to a different school every other year. My mainstream experience was a nightmare as I had no terps or notetakers in those days. Then I got sent to VSDB in Staunton and then transferred to MSSD. I'm a grad of MSSD. I think I've gone to something like 8 to 10 different schools by the time I was 18.
