Hello! - New to this board but not Tinnitus, etc.

Hello everyone/anyone...

I was born and raised in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia then). I first got tinnitus when my brother threw a fire-cracker at me at age 6, but adapted to it (Ah, the resilience of youth!). It did not bother me much until some noisy construction work I was helping with nearly 30 years later in early 1980's. Uh-oh...that was the real beginning! Bi-aural tinnitus, worse on the left = the side where that darn fire-cracker went off. Earplugs and earmuffs in noise zones became du jour from then on, though I still lived a pretty normal and vibrant life.

Hyperacusis and louder ringing joined the party (sic) in 2006 thanks to a cocktail of ototoxic meds which made me feel like my head was getting blown off inside. That was a mistake on the part of my docs, but I was really ill and they were doing their best. It was one of those 'irreversible mistakes' unfortunately. [Maybe I will write up some observations and warnings about meds and tinnitus at a future time, as I have done a lot of research and asking around about it. My confirmed suspicion, is that I bet a LOT of tinnitus is unknowingly caused by 'harmless meds' - Ibuprofen for instance, AND exposure to loud sound while taking the meds. It's remarkable how much correlation I have turned up just among people I know]. Anyway...I could hardly handle this new hyperacusis-louder tinnitus combo for years. Depressed, scared, life turned upside down...a mess. The added hyperacusis makes it so much more difficult.

However, over then next 6 years things calmed a bit, but despite high vigilance I got re-triggered by exposure I could not even tell was affecting me at the time. It felt/sounded safe (a small meeting in room with hard acoustics) but it was not, and I walked out with an even higher level of tinnitus. Gaaaaaaaaarh!!!

I try to not wear plugs all the time like we're supposed to not, but the world is a noisy place, and wearing them just amplifies the inside-my-head sound of it, so...Sigh!

Now I'm pretty reclusive and can't do 95% of the things I would like to be doing (travel, dance, dinner with a group of friends, etc., etc.) and feeling pretty lonely, isolated, fighting to keep positive and figure out what to do with this the rest of my life.
No doubt, I'm not actually alone as we all know there are millions of people have this affliction. Thus I figured I would join this board and try to get out of my shell a bit. Plus after all this time I do have a good amount of experience under my belt about the subject!

Best to all, Zimichael

 

Hi Zimichae, nice to have you aboard. Interesting story, we will be looking forward to hearing more on your insight regarding T

 

Hello Zimichael (pretty cool name ^^) welcome to the forum
You're definitely not alone. This forum is great for support in these tough times, many experienced tinnituscarriers in here = )

 

Thanks for the welcome! Still clicking around trying to find all the in's and out's of this site...There's a lot here and some research stuff I had not come across too. However, no 'silver bullet' yet it seems. Sigh!
Appears to be a great, active membership as well, for a relatively "obscure" affliction - well, not obscure to us who have it! I'm sure I will slowly get to know who's who in due course, though not sure what exactly shows up for members who click on another member/their icon-picture, etc. I have a whole winter ahead so no rush, and there's only so many books I can read before I get 'dingy'!
Thanks again...Take care, Zimichael

 

Theres a ton of stuff to go through here, but as you say no magic bullit, yet. You will find most of the latest research going on regarding T here. Kick back, put on some soothing music and have a look around...