I am kinda similar, I was born HoH though(moderate/severe hearing loss) and went to a hearing school, I received speech therapy and sign language training though through special assistance. Then may hearing crashed in my teenage years and now it is profound in the left ear and severe-profound in the right ear,
I can't use the phone, even though I wear a hearing aid in my right ear I can barely make out or distinguish the sounds with it. I use sign language with the deaf and I am able to speak with the hearing and read their lips very well (I even got offered a job b/c of my lip reading skills).
I consider myself deaf because no matter what assistance I get or how loud the sound I absolutely cannot make out what your saying without lipreading or using sign language, TTY etc... I can't use amplifiers or telephones.
Therefore I am not HoH because in my opinion HoH can usually talk on the phone with amplifiers or using their hearing aids.
Though because my speech skills the Deaf snobs will not consider me HoH, I dare them to spend the 10 hours I spend every week going through a dictionary to make sure I am pronouncing a word right because I cannot hear how it is said
!!