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If I understand your question correctly, there will be no degradation of hearing from this point. As I'm sure you know, the cochlear implant bypasses the whole ear drum moving the fluid in the cochlea which moves the hair cells. The implant sends electrical impluses directly to hearing nerve, so the amount of stimulation the nerve gets may need to be increased over time.
We decided to learn ASL to give our daughter a choice later in life and to have a backup for times that she is not wearing her implant. I think being able to comunicate is the important part, not the method. We're not as accomplished in ASL as we probably should be, its hard getting better when the only time you use it outside of the family is with the sign language teacher once a week.
Before our daughter got her implant, we met a few adults who had got one later in life and everyone of them thought they made a great choice. The only downside was the way they were treated like an outsider by the deaf culture.
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