Being "hearing impaired" can sometimes feel as a punishment from hell. I do not exaggerate and I can totally understand if your first instinct is to say that you'd take that over say..burning in endless scolding hot lava. Yes. it does sound more comfortable but the effects can be more perverse and long lasting ( maybe not compared to eternity..).

You see, the most misunderstood thing about being hearing impaired is that when you can not hear, you are actually silenced. It sounds a bit counter intuitive again - deaf people talk loud, right?! - but that's how it is. Try to focus on your conversations for a bit, really try to deconstruct the flow of a good conversation, especially if it involved more than one persons. You will notice how the subject changes fast and you react immediately to what a new person bring to the discussion. In a way, that becomes "known" and used for future reference in that particular conversation and even in the future. "Hey! Remember that Anne told us last week that..."


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So now imagine you can't hear half o that or you mishear. Slowly but surely you start to lose the flow and you can only rejoin on a "high" when someone makes something clear, a conclusion that you take for ganted without knowing all the facts..which means that you can not argue against it properly, so you better shut up. You smile, you say ok, good, well maybe who knows yes. You become transparent, slow, a watered down version of yourself and more and more into your head. That's where the real life happens. 
And almost no matter what, no one can help you.

I was walking with a friend of mine and a few other people  just last week to a party. He had broke his leg last summer and he is still recovering from this. He walks a little slowly so everyone adapted by walking slowly as well. At one point, he misstep and almost fell. Everyone jumped to help:
"**Are you alright man?**".
"**Let me help!**".
We helped him a bit and everything was alright. He's a great guy. We got to the party in time and helped get up the stairs. I was the last one in line.