Well, it is actually not 'severe' but moderate, according to all the audiologist data, including the one who gave me the test. There are two stages left- severe and profound.
My hearing curve looked like that almost 30 years ago though not quite so severe; most of the damage was done in my teens and 20's, with later years just being the 'icing on the cake'. By the time I was 35 or so, I was wearing ear protection in all noisy environments but again, it was too late, plus hearing loss is more hereditary than any other single factor. Both my mother and M-I-L suffered severe hearing loss without ever having been exposed to excessively (read: damaging) noisy environments.
The good news is that when people mumble at me, my brain makes up something that sounds similar to what the person said but is in fact much, much funnier. "Darkest Hour" becomes 'Doctor Sour', and "sheet ripper" becomes 'sheep dipper' and so forth. hijinx ensue. :-)
As to the high frequencies, while humans can hear a theoretical 20 KHz, it is of little actual import. Almost all of the intelligence of speech, for example, is carried below 5 KHz, actually well below 4 KHz, making the higher frequencies unimportant. No one tests above ~8 KHz, and no hearing aid devices report on amplification or total harmonic distortion above this level. In fact, the frequencies above 4 KHz are relatively unimportant for any circumstance.
Remember, "we all know" a Stradivarius is the finest, most bestus' violin ever made..... until an actual double- blind study is made, and then "we" (trained musicians) cannot pick out the Stradivarius even 50% of the time. :-)
There is a group who can hear far above the nominal limit of human response of 20 KHz but I think that is better left to the thread about nothing.....
Brian
Wow- that was the first thing I noticed, that the chart only goes up to 8Khz. Seems odd they wouldn't test for a full range, from perhaps 20khz to 15Khz.
You do have a severe hearing loss in quite a wide range of upper frequencies. I am amazed you could tolerate that for so long, the world would sound like... well, muffled mud.