@jnieman Are your hearing aids helping you? I hope they are well fit. Reverse slope hearing loss is less common but not totally uncommon. Today's high quality hearing aids can be adjusted more to accommodate...though still not perfect.

It's a sad reality that medical professionals don't have much education in how hearing loss affects a person. They need in-service training done by people with hearing loss who are willing to share information. All of us have to be proactive in doing that personally but far too many hide the reality of hearing loss because they are embarrassed. Stigma is our enemy.

You are correct, consonants are the sounds that go first with progressive hearing loss. Vowels give speech power but consonants give it meaning. An interesting way to share that with people is to take a 4 syllable word and ask people what it is w/o consonants. Let them see the vowels. Then let them see only the consonants it's pretty amazing words like I_ _O_ _ I_ _ E In context helps in conversation but not always. Here it is with just the consonants. _MP_SS_BL_ It's an amazing exercise when done with a sentence too.

It helps a lot to understand how to explain hearing loss.

Julieo4