Another Unfortunate Rambling Story: A Year of Tinnitus Setbacks

[tobyharrixon]

I've grieved losing the future I wanted and everything I worked toward. I try not to feel anything now.

I had awful luck but still tried hard, then I messed up, then more bad luck, then I messed up more, and all of that brought me from mild tinnitus, where I was almost getting over it last December, to the absolutely torturous situation I'm in now. I don't really want to live this out.

It's not even that loud, but it's so intensely high, piercing, and relentless.

I also have pretty bad foot pain, so I can't walk far to take my mind off things. Cycling is fine, but I have to wear earplugs because I live in a city and I also worry about wind noise. Swimming makes the foot pain worse when I do breaststroke, which I prefer, because I have a shoulder injury that doesn't handle overhead movement well. Arms only breaststroke doesn't really work for me. I could try backstroke with arms only. The pool's noisy and depressing anyway. I do have custom swim plugs, but I don't think they keep out all the water, so ear infections are always a possibility.

I want to get an indoor bike, but I don't have much space for one. I used to be a big cyclist who travelled all over the city, and I always thought stationary bikes were boring, so it's depressing to downgrade. I was still doing long cycles when I first got tinnitus last summer, and that actually helped. It's a completely different situation now. I've been stressed and depressed and getting worse all year, and honestly I need a miracle because the rest of my life isn't worth living like this. I'm turning thirty in January.

I did some cool things in life. Nowhere near enough, but I'm thankful for what I did. I played drums for years without protection, but it was an earwax block and microsuction that triggered everything in the end. Since last year I've been through nearly every single thing that can worsen tinnitus. Pure tone exposure, antidepressants, sleeping pills, intense chronic stress, noise-cancelling headphones, acupuncture that made things worse, several loud noise exposures, a neck massage that gave me a new tone, and even some supplements seemed to make things worse.

This is a total vent, but I've read stories like this from other people and I know it doesn't help anything by itself. I'm not even sure what the point of venting is here, maybe it's just to document a snapshot of my story as one more of the many unfortunate stories on this site.

 

[Badger55]

I got severe, relentless, high-frequency tinnitus after an explosion when I was in my thirties. I was also a frequent Walkman user before the explosion. I could not sleep and I wanted to end it, and this went on for well over a year.

But gradually, and I want to emphasize this, very slowly and almost imperceptibly, the volume of the noise declined. It was two to three years later when I suddenly realized that I was no longer suffering. I no longer needed a masker to sleep. I went back to listening to music, and I even flew to Europe a couple of times.

So hang in there, buddy. Suffering is better than dying, and there is real hope.