Hi Eileen. I had the exact same thing, in my early 60s, woke up one day feeling like i was hearing under water. Let it go for a holiday weekend and when i went to see doctor, he shook his head, said i had sensorineural hearing loss, that he'd try high-dose steroids for 2 weeks but it was probably too late. seems like it needs to be started pretty quickly. on top of that my loss of hearing was replaced in that ear with non-stop tinnitus. so yeah, i felt like you, i grieved my hearing loss, it's a challenge because all sounds seem like they're coming from the same place so it takes getting used to, and the tinniitus is annoying but there are lots of YouTube audio/videos that help with that, if you have it. i guess as someone said above, we deal with it and move on. but it's always there. glad to hear there are other people with this same condition.