A Car Accident (After HBOT)

Well yeah, just my luck. After a hyperbaric oxygen therapy on my way home a van crashed into me from the back. Like break pedals didn't exist.

Just waiting in the emergency waiting room with a neck collar for the results.

Can barely move my head - a proper whiplash.

Pls pray this doesn't exacerbate my tinnitus else that's gonna be my death.

 

Looks like both you and @linearb are "lucky" these days.
Sorry for the mishap (both of you!) and get well!

 

That was mine. Sorry to hear, @Jiri -- hope we both feel better soon

 

@Jiri ,
Hope you go on ok at the hospital.
Fingers crossed your tinnitus does not get worse.
Love glynis

 

Hope you are okay! I cannot believe we just had a thread on airbags and now two members have been in car accidents.

 

Thanks everyone for your kind words!

Just on my way home from the hospital...

@linearb Sorry to hear about your car accident too. I do hope we feel better soon.

Anybody has any idea what would be the time frame for a whiplash to occur and a tinnitus worsening?

 

I'd try not to stress about this, and just focus on getting medical attention, and doing whatever exercises/stretches a PT says is a good idea.

I think with accidents the big risk is just the noise of the accident; if that were a problem you'd already know it.

 

True. I just can't get it out of my head now. Don't wanna wake up in the middle of the night with screaming ears. You can get a tinnitus from a whiplash too (especially car accidents) I heard, like a pinched vagus nerve. I asked the surgeon about it, he didn't even know what it was. Anyway, I had a mild concussion and my neck is proper stiff.

I had my Peltor Bull's Eye 1 earmuff on when it happened so not too much worried about the noise.

@Greg Sacramento Any rough estimates on when (and if) to expect a possible tinnitus exacerbation after a whiplash such as in this case scenario?

My CT scan of C6 - Th 5 was ok; C4 - Th6 also ok.

@Bill Bauer What do you think?

 

@linearb and @Jiri.... Hope both of you guys are doing ok, and that your T stays at baseline, accidents are bad enough without taking tinnitus into consideration.

 

@linearb @Jiri Linearb, sorry about your accident. Jiri, whiplash can show immediately or after 10 to 14 days, but since Linearb and you already have tinnitus an increase in tinnitus would show immediately and it hasn't.

 

It was great that you had ear protection on. If your T hasn't spiked yet, it is a very good sign. If your T doesn't spike when you wake up tomorrow, I think you can stop worrying about it spiking.

 

Well, tbh, it has spiked a little bit in my right ear yestr evening. Perhaps due to the stress, the concussion or the whiplash. Idk. All I know is it was louder high-pitched in my r. ear in the morning when I woke up and now I can hear the computer fan over it so it might be getting better again. A temporary spike I strongly hope.

 

@Jiri

WTF bro, that's some tough luck, hope you're doing okay!

 

Yea, not so much. My neck is stiff I have to wear a cervical collar now. Worried about the possibility of exacerbation of my tinnitus over time...

 

@Jiri

Yeah totally get that man but seeing as it has not spiked yet I think you're safe ...
Stay strong bro! We will all get through this shit show!

 

Thanks for the positive words. If that day ever comes I will feel reborn.

 

So sorry that you got caught in the accident! Hope you both are OK, and I know it's easy to focus on the whiplash injury but it's great that you weren't hurt more! Car accidents can be fatal and good that you had protection on! Hope you have a quick and uncomplicated recovery and that it doesn't affect your tinnitus!

 

@Jiri

That day will come! I find it difficult to believe now too but then again nothing in life really is permanent.
Stay positive, accept the things we cannot change, have courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference, in time we will habituate and tinnitus will be like a paper tiger!

 

I know this might sound morbid but say I didn't survive that, it'd have sorted out a lot of problems in my life. I am focused on the whiplash injury but more in terms of exacerbating my tinnitus. I had an acoustic trauma and now it might be combined with some sort of a somatic neck injury like a hematoma pressing on smth or a pinched nervus vagus. If I get that high-pitched screaming ear again like upon onset of my tinnitus that could be it.

I really admire your positive attitude. I wish I could now think the same. All I'm thinking now is will this car accident, a bad whiplash cause a worsening of my T to the point where it won't be no longer tolerable? Again, I'm only a human and I can only take so much. Paper tiger sounds like a dream now.

Get this, you're returning home from a theraphy that can help you, full of hope and then some a**shole crashes into you bec he doesn't understand what a safe distance is. Doesn't have a driving license on him, no identity car, nothing. Half deaf, eyeglasses thick as a thimble and possibly a little retarded too. A couple moments later there's a police, fireman and you see yourself in an ambulance, bec it was a multiple cars crash. All of a sudden your hopes for recovery are *poof* gone. Depressed to the max here awaiting a spike to occur.

 

That’s really rubbish for you. So sorry and I expect you are still traumatised by the Road Traffic Collision. It may not and if you are depressed and anxious your T will seem worse. Hug( I don’t know how to do the emoji!)

 

That's completely understandable, sometimes life just throws crap at you and it's more than logical you are feeling down now. Just remember that nothing is permanent, feelings do change, as will our feelings toward tinnitus. It's just a long and tough process but in due time we will get there. Because of tinnitus I pretty much lost my job (luckily not my income as in the Netherlands we have great social security), there is immense pressure on my wife and surroundings, my friends are nowhere to be seen and I can't even be the father I want to be for my 14 month old son, I have always been a very strong guy who kick boxed and lifted for over 12 years but now I fear going out the door sometimes. On top of that my dad passed away only a year or so ago and I'm apparently suffering from a burnout according to my GP. Thing is I refuse to believe things won't get better, with or without tinnitus. What tinnitus has taught me thus far is that I was living life far too stressful, that I took things for granted and I was stuck in a cycle of fighting to survive. Sometimes life gives us things that our current coping mechanisms can't deal with and it makes us crash and burn, fighting does not work with tinnitus because you can fight all you want in the end it's still there. Many people have tinnitus but do not suffer, in fact 75% of people with tinnitus do not have a strong emotional response to it, most of us on this forum however do not belong to that group, heck I can't even get through the day without Xanax right now ...

That does not mean that we will always stay like this, because this, unlike tinnitus, is a choice.

We can work on changing our emotional response to tinnitus by countering it with positive action instead of fighting it and part of the process is also being fearful and having doubts and facing these fears. Only last week I had bouts of extreme fear and literally felt like I was going to die. Strange enough by going through this we also learn a valuable lessen, fear does not kill, this you must have experienced similarly when you had to go to the psych ward in the hospital (I was very close to that point too so I completely understand). By accepting it and letting it be, (accepting does not mean you like it, it means you no longer fight it) we train our subconscious mind that tinnitus is not a threat. By countering with positive (low stress) actions we teach our subconscious mind to relax when we hear tinnitus. With practice and patience this will lead to habituation. In this way and in due time you subconscious will consider it less and less of a threat but this typically takes substantial time and will take anywhere from 6 months to some years. This is 100% real because I have met many people who have gone through this process. In the end it is not the tinnitus that is the problem, it is our emotional response to tinnitus.

Once we learn the skills to cope with tinnitus we will pretty much have the skills to cope with any emotional issues.

The faster we try and have a positive mindset though and realise how intertwined tinnitus is with the central nervous system and is not purely a auditory issue the better and the sooner we learn to accept it and focus on wellbeing of the mind which in the end is the only way. Perhaps in due time the tinnitus will even fade into the background but once we are fully habituated I doubt this will even be important to us anymore. In any case it will no longer bother us and we will be able to live normally again. I also believe once we no longer suffer from tinnitus it will not pre-occupy our mind and perhaps in due time will even fade from perception. Which to me is as good as being cured. Don't know if you already seen his videos but I swear by Julian Hill's views on tinnitus, I was not one for all the zen like rhetoric but then again my current mindset up til now landed me in this position to begin with ...

Habituation and How People Get Better with...

Perhaps these can ease your mind a little bit during this tough time.

I also found this thread on TT which I find very inspiring:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/my-positive-story-and-insights-to-habituation.21794/

Stay strong brother, you are not alone!

 

@Chris Holland Look here, bro. I had my hopes for one day recovery. I don't want it to just stay there relentlessly at the same volume and pitch. I'd be happy enough it changed the frequency from the high-pitched whistle to a subtle humming sound. THEN I could habituate. I do my maximum for that to happen. The accident that happened, whiplash and a minor concussion just took away all my hopes for that to happen one day. I'll be living now in a lots fear the next 10 - 14 days as @Greg Sacramento said if it gets worse. I might have injured some soft tissue, a vagues nerve, a small hematoma pressing onto something.... I am sure you get the point. Yes, I do know the guy in the link. I saw some of his videos and it didn't provide much relief to me to be completely honest. I need a miracle to happen. I need that Uni of Michigan device to get on the market and work as soon as possible.

Listen, I don't want to sound like a cry baby or selfish. Your story is also very touching and I am genuinelly sorry for all the grief and pain that you have been through. Just like a feel sorry for everybody else who got this terrible condition and is struggling with it. I hit my bottom with this car accident and I struggle greatly to find HOPE again.

I've been through a lot of c*** in my life too and this.. I can't even concentrate on anything, the bed time? I have to drug myself to go to sleep. I only leave the house with my Peltor Bull's Eye 1 earmuffs on and a spare earplugs in my pocket. You know, there's an important aspect to all this. Had it not been for spikes (and they could be permanent sometimes I learned) perhaps, the whole process of habituation would be A LOT EASIER.

The message that I'm trying to get accros here is that I hit the rock bottom, am depressed greatly again and I lost hope and that's really bad.

@linearb Did you get any spike from your car accident? And how badly you got it, it looks like a concussion minimum type of an injury? If someone told me this accident was lethal I'd not have been surprised.

 

I don't really know because my tinnitus had already been at a piercing wail, I'd had ETD following an illness for a week. However, I randomly had an earplug in my bad ear (it was only there to hold some wax-loosening oil in, usually if I use any earpro while driving it's just Dubs 12db filters so I can blast my podcasts over road noise). So, I have a pretty good "A/B" test, in that one ear was exposed, the other wasn't.

There was no muffling, no pain, no temporary threshold shift. Honestly, it seemed quieter to me than the sound it makes when I split a big block of wood.

No concussion, no head trauma, no severe neck or spinal trauma. I think I got a bit lucky, but also benefitted from my behavior of taking sketchy dirt roads instead of highways -- because that meant that both vehicles here were only going ~25. That was still enough of a bang to total my car, but if we'd been going 50 it's a whole different story.

Also if he had hit me ~3' further down the side of the car then his bumper would have been in my lap, and that would also have been a different story. Yet another reminder that cars are, basically, insanely dangerous and likely to be the most hazardous thing that people do in a day.

How are you doing? Looks like snow/ice on the roads was a factor for you, too? Trucks and vans are actually, IMO, pretty terrible vehicles for winter; they are not balanced well and prone to spinning out, they are also very very heavy which makes them hard to stop. Give me a Subaru with AWD and studded tires any day.

 

@Jiri Did your airbags deploy? I think you mentioned the impact from behind but it looked like the front of your car was also damaged. And you mentioned having a concussion, so I was unsure if an airbag deployed to help you avoid hitting your head.

The stress of all of this could be enough to make tinnitus seem worse. Try not to catastrophize and expect only the worse. I know that is easier said than done, but I sometimes think we make our own self-fulfilling prophecies. You don’t know with 100 percent certainty that your hope of improvement is gone, you’re assuming it is.

I recall there being a member who wore a cervical collar and felt her tinnitus improved. Perhaps now seeing a doctor for your neck post this accident will be beneficial.

 

also -- this accident seemed a lot less loud to me, than what I remember from hitting a tree at ~75 in ~1999. Like, a lot, lot, less loud. In that case I feel like we both stumbled out of the car feeling like we'd been flashbanged, sort of stumbling in the daylight and unstable on our feet. In this case, I instantly got out full of anger and ready to start tearing the guy a new one, and then had the presence of mind to curb that and behave basically reasonably, if a little unsteadily.

Notably, my side-impact bags did not deploy; those are supposed to be the loudest because they're literally right next to your ear. Basic physics dictates that the same airbag going off 16" from your ear, is... 6% as much noise trauma if it had gone off 1" from your ear? (Acoustic energy falls by half every time the distance doubles).

 

You describe it as if you had a tinnitus spike all the time if I understood correctly? You don't really worry about getting a spike anymore, do you? How loud would you describe yur tinnitus is on a scale from 1 - 10 (being te worst) when it's on its baseline?

Also, all what you said is pretty understandable and makes a good sense. Anyway, I'm glad you didn't get injured.

Yeah, Subaru Forester would be my No. 1 when it comes to a snow calamity. We've had some bad snow storms.

 

That's a sound advice but I am just that kind of a person. Very unfortunately. That's why I'm on so many antidepressants but they don't seem to work on me just yet. I've been taking them for about a month now.

To answer your question - no the airbags didn't deploy. It was an old vehicle. I didn't hit my head but I was mm away from the dashboard and then the quick sudden movement forward and back itself is enough for your brain to hit the skull in a motion that can cause a minor concussion.

I need HOPE for better tomorrows again and that my tinnitus will fade with time, even if by 30% - 40%. That's all it takes for me to fight and not give up. No one can guarantee you that tho. All it takes is one kid with a strong firecracker or a road accident and you're back to square one or worse.

 

This is really hard to answer, because when it's "really bad" vs "not that bad at all", if I plug my ears and listen, it sounds the same, or nearly the same. It feels like it's got more to do with how my brain is processing that and to what extent it's a background hiss vs a piercing foreground squeal.

When I was keeping track of self-ratings for distress and volume day to day, my volume ratings tended to fluctuate between 4-7, and my distress between 4-9. I say it's been "loud" lately, but if I'm sitting like 15' away from my fridge, the fridge hum still seems to be about-the-same-volume as the tinnitus. The distress has more to do with it being a relentless, obnoxiously high-pitched set of sound, than anything else. I have a bunch of other tones and noises I can hear if I tune into them which I don't even really think of as "tinnitus" because they just don't bother me at all. The 14khz stuff does.

Yes, I think I was already spiked by protracted illness and having my eustachian tubes pretty well blocked for a couple weeks from being sick and lots of elevation changes. Add to that, when I was really unwell and felt awful, I took some amount of benzos and opiates, and so of course there's a rebound from that. Last week my wife and I were both sick and said we felt like we'd been hit by a truck. Then I got hit by a truck. So today I actually feel like I got hit by a truck :-P

 

I get that, I feel like that often too when it's just relentlessly blaring away. In any case even if it stays the same you can habituate, I understand that might not be what you want to hear but it is the truth.

You don't sound like a crybaby at all, I totally get that, I would be devastated too.
To be honest this is not even by far all the grief I've been through in my life but that being said tinnitus is something else. I can honestly say this is the biggest challenge I have faced in all my life, definitely rock bottom.

Good thing is though, once you hit rock bottom the only way is up.

I use Xanax every day now and I go to sleep on Temazepam, but so what? There wil be a time when we will not need this anymore, it's just not today. The spikes, yes that I get, that sucks ...
But look at like this, you are leaving the house, that is already a small step towards habituation.

Totally get that too but odds of that happening are zero to none and habituation happens in 98% of the cases. Also please understand that what Julian is saying takes a different approach to the problem and is not a cure for the tinnitus itself but for the mind to help calm your central nervous system which will in turn help you with your tinnitus and the perception of your tinnitus. From my own experience I can say when you are relaxed the perceived loudness of tinnitus also backs off. It is all about perception.

This approach takes a shift in thinking and I understand this is not what you would like to hear right now.
Again, stay strong bro, I get it, I feel depressed too but positivity however small is what will get us through.

 

Why don't you believe in Dr. Shore's research? There are rumours (some ppl on the forum asked the team already via email) that they might release the device on the market before the end of Phase 2.

Also:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/retigabine-trobalt-potiga-—-general-discussion.5074/

+ this is all very individual, someone might have a subtle humming noise in their ears that's easy to habituate to and someone else might have that high-pitched squeal in either one or both ears. Not sure if you can habituate to that.