Sooner Arrow

Greetings...

Well, if you are here then you have seen that I've had tinnitus for almost 30 years. It started off as a barely audible but persistent tone in both ears while I was in the military and then it slowly progressed to a point in 2007 where it started to affect my ability to concentrate at work. All of those years (prior to 2007), I was able to ignore it somewhat easily for work however it did affect my ability to sleep all night beginning in the late 1990's. It was at this time (in 2007), that I started experiencing moderate anxiety attacks in the morning prior to going to work and other irregular times.

Then in 2010, I blew a disc in the lumbar region of my back. I had emergency back surgery and then about two months of convalescing at home while taking transdermal fentanyl and then a fair amount of morphine. These pain meds were required because I had two additional lumbar discs that still needed repair and I had this second surgery in 2011. Again, two months of convalescing on now large quantities of morphine.

After returning to work again in early 2011, this is when the tinnitus started substantially impacting my ability to concentrate. In 2012, I lost my job and although I found another position relatively quickly, I was still struggling at work, at home and to sleep.

In 2013, I went to an ENT and of course, I had hearing loss in both ears. The ENT doc and the audiologist recommended I try a hearing aid that provides white noise or music in addition to boosting the sound. So we set the volume of the white noise to 75% initially however within 30 seconds that noise faded away into nothing. I wore the devices for two weeks and went back to the audiologist who now set the white noise volume to 100% and again, it faded into nothing with no recognizable relief.

The tone in both ears are pretty consistent although many times throughout my waking hours there is secondary and even tertiary tones, mainly in my left ear but that does occur in the right too.

Now I can hardly function because the tinnitus tones are so loud that I can barely concentrate just a few minutes at time and I can't remember exactly what I was trying to do when I try to concentrate again. I'm living in my daughter's basement as a hermit because I'm not able to hold conversations or work.