I agree, but I don't have a way of getting to them. I fiddle around with books and online info, but no one speaks sign TO me, and I can talk to people really well, my mouth works fine. Okay now I deserve the smack.....

But seriously I haven't lost my ability to speak, I tend to talk over people because I don't hear them talking to anyone.
I have to get my family to learn sign and that is a different story. My daughter is the only one who is encouraging about this, she is working on learning and teaching my granddaughter, but in the meantime, they giggle ALL at my mistakes. I come off really different in person, I can be more "myself" here on the forum. We are all using the same form of communication. But I'm trying to use lip-reading to understand a spoken language and use my brain to fill-in-the-blank. My brain gets overworked just attempting this. So I tend to ignore a lot of conversations going on around me and don't really understand things that happen even when I'm right there in the room.
I DO hear sounds but can't make out what they are, but you use sound for lots of things besides communication. There are a lot of vibrations in a room that you can feel as well that I use. I can feel that someone is flushing the toilet in the next room or I feel the rush of air from when the door opens, or the slight shaking of the house when someone shuts the front door, the dogs running down the hall. But I can't tell the cat is meowing unless I look her in the face. I can hear the rooster crow if I'm standing next to it, and YES, I can hear a nubian goat yelling for dinner. That doesn't make speech any easier to discern. But I can use the pitch of sound to tell WHO is speaking, so at this point, any small amount of sound is helpful. It is very tiring being this way.
We are going to a picnic tomorrow and I don't know whether to look forward or not. I used to LOVE parties and crowds and now my experience is so different, I tend to get depressed because I anticipate one thing and experience another. I wouldn't wish my disease on anyone. The only good thing I can say about it at this point is that I'm on disability, so I don't have to try to somehow earn a living this way, I would fail.