Your AN is small, beningn, slow growing, so you are right to be calm. You have a lot of time to research your options.
Even if you have a small amount of hearing left and no word recognition you can still have directionality. I lost hearing gradually and I could still tell the direction of sound, until I lost hearing entirely.
You don't have balance problems because your other side has compensated. I also never had balance problems, and even upon examination the doctors thought that my balance was pretty good. I had to take the test to find out that I had 90% weakness on the AN side. Because the other side had compensated I didn't have any balance problems after surgery either.
So there it goes. What you are feeling is normal - it is strange that everyone reacts differently and sometimes people with the smallest ANs have the most intense symptoms, but this is how it is.
Marianna
