It was at this point I realized that the author is in heavy denial, even after decades of suffering. Deafness is probably the biggest impairment a human being can have, after blindness.
Imagine sitting around the table with 20 people, everyone else is speaking Chinese and you maybe know a few words of the language - you might grab the odd word or phrase that people have said but you are not in the conversation really. You quickly lose track of what is being talked about and as time goes on, more and more topics are discussed, you realise you don't want to say anything yourself in case what you are about to say has already been talked about and you will look stupid. So you fade in to the background and just hope no-one pipes up with, "hey, Bob, what do you think about that?".
Modern hearing aids give you great tools to combat these situations and they do work.
I guess the difference for me really is that hearing is now hard work, it's not something I can relax and do passively, I need to concentrate on words, listen hard, lip read and fill in the gaps of context I missed. It can be exhausting, especially in big groups. I've just upgraded to a pair of GN ReSound Linx 3D aids, which are a massive help to me.