Might as well start off a first message with a bang. I was diagnosed at the younger end of the spectrum--in fact shortly before my 30th birthday which caused many jokes amongst my friends that my "warranty" had expired. I had been in a car accident with a friend driving and shortly thereafter had trouble hearing out of one ear (I am sure this sequence of events is rather familiar to everyone here). At the time, I did not have health insurance, so this resulted in a lot of "Doc in Box" visits and the result of "Yes, you can't hear very well on one side, and no we don't know why, so you need to see a specialist." The long and the short of it (and I was lucky to be living in a large city--NYC--at the time) I was diagnosed with a large-ish right side acoustic neuroma of 2.2cm. A course of steroid returned my hearing to normal. Which was a relief.
This was in the fall of 1996, given the time period the person I fist saw didn't even offer any options beyond saying, "I will of course be doing the surgery..." (this was at NYU). In this pre-widespread Internet days there wasn't a great deal of information, but I did know enough that I wanted to hear from more than one doctor and ended up with a doctor who said surgery was an option, but given my age and relative lack of symptoms that I should just watch and wait. I have moved around a lot and actually been to several doctors since the last being at Johns Hopkins. There has been about 2mm of grown the entire time period since 1996 and only one other bout of hearing loss (and that was about 10 years ago, also alleviated by steroids). But to date I have been absolutely fine beyond some balance issues particularly in very dark situations and when I am tired. The upshot is that I am glad that I did not opt to immediately have surgery and apparently am something of a Methuselah of the watching and waiting crowd. I am about due for another MRI (it's been 3 years), but don't anticipate any changes.
I hope!
