Cicada Tinnitus

I’ve posted here a couple times in the last year since my tinnitus became dramatically worse in late 2016. I’ve been trying to manage it with a sound generating hearing aid, which has definitely helped keep me off the brink, but I’ve been having some thoughts and making some observations that I thought are worth sharing to see if anybody has the same experience.

I have been on vacation on a small island in the Andaman sea for the last couple weeks. This has meant a lot of swimming, a lot of wet hair and with this more time than I’m used to alone with my tinnitus (because I can’t wear my masking aids as much as I usually do).

Hilariously there is a natural masking device here which is the cicadas. Where I live back home in the US we do not have cicadas so it is not a noise I was much familiar with, save for having heard it on maybe a couple vacations pre-tinnitus and not thought about it.

Now I have something I can point people to when explaining my tinnitus because I was they really sound *exactly* like my tinnitus - the frequency, the oscillation and the general sensation of hearing them. My tinnitus is basically a intrusive cicada noise that osciallates to pop up on top of my ordinary hearing once or twice a second.

As I mentioned I’ve also been swimming a lot here and with that obviously I experience a more total occlusion of my hearing than I’m used to and can very clearly observe the real seed of this tinnitus in my left ear. It’s a oscillating, very high (7khz or 8khz probably) sound that drops out once or twice a second. In a prior thread another user had described their tinnitus as being “like electrical misfiring going haywire, going up and down and up and down” which I agreed with and would say is also a good description of the sound that is overwhelming in my left ear when having this total quiet and occlusion underwater.

The reason I am posting all of this is because I feel like these observations give a crystal clear picture of the sensations I have and I am wondering if anybody hears roughly (or exactly) the same thing.

Audiometrically I have great hearing (no loss at all within the range of the extended audiogram, though I know these are not complete) and always wanted to believe (but maybe it’s naive/childish) that there is something else beneath this tinnitus, especially given it’s oscillating quality (which started up in a single moment late 2016, and has made it 100x more unbearable than it ever had been, and has made this year an especially dark one).

Thank you as always for the support that exists on this forum. Over time I hope the medical establishment becomes less apathetic and more insightful about tinnitus.

 

@Nick NY
Mine sounds like Cicada too at about 7000Hz - 8000Hz.
Mine is also perfectly in time with my heartbeat (Pulsatile) with the odd much higher screech thrown in for pleasure...
The only masking sound that I have found that gives me any relief whatsoever is the one on the link below.
Sadly the relief is very short lived.
Best of luck figuring tai Sh*t out. I have stopped trying as its so weird and random.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs5Ggk2_gfs

 

Yup, oscillating cicada-like noises sums up the more obnoxious parts of my tinnitus pretty well

I used to joke to my wife about wanting to keep a terrarium of crickets and cicadas in my office, but she stopped thinking it was funny

 

I also have this kind of tinnitus and it jumps around so it doesn't really sound like one specific tone, it's just a hissing kind of jumpy cicada sound also in my left ear only it's gotten a bit louder recently than it was before.

 

The very high pitched cicada sound is typical of high frequncy hearing loss - I cannot hear above 12k so that's about where a collection of lost sound are and make up that cicada sound - not a constant beep

I bought some very expensive titanium horn super tweeters and with the cicada sound from the myNoise app this masks T completely in a room

 

I too have cicada tinnitus and it fluctuates quite a bit in volume.

 

Thank you for these follow ups. I am surprised to hear that this exact sensation is the same as you have (since it isn't what I had for most of the time I had tinnitus). My professional/education background is in computer science and software where you can deeply know everything down from what is seen on screen, to placing pixels on the screen to logic gates and physics beneath. I think that's the biggest part of my frustration with tinnitus. The sort of bullshit half-explanations we have because our mastery/study of the human body is in such a primitive place compared to other domains like technology and engineering. Obviously if there is this sensation there are mechanics behind it. It is crazy to me that state of the art in medicine right now seems to be vague theories. I am sure a lot of you feel the same way, especially when something is so overwhelming and in-your-face all the time, the fact that the mechanics can be so badly understood is surreal.

 

@Nick NY
I think that as humans we have a desire ( or are programmed...) to understand and sort stuff out.
We are however incredibly complex machines.
The fact that we will probably never understand our T or be able to cure it leaves us only with acceptance.
Acceptance frustrates me as its basically failure.
Our medics have no clue and cant appreciate unless they too had had some kind of T or H.
I hope today is a better one for you in the mess that is T .

 

Yes, mine is the same and I always point out to my wife when we hear it. I think she's getting tired of it.

 

Mine is same. Originally only left side. Now both but 3 different tones/pitches. Alternating pattern of timing. But like others sleep seems to be a factor. Lately vertigo - the room appears to tilt sharply downward to the right. Hard to describe. It’s not same as the head position vertigo I’ve had for decades - medical name is benign paroxsysmal positional vertigo. Anyway it’s reassuring to have found this forum. To know others go through this insanity too.

 

I would like to talk about Cicada tinnitus.
Maybe we can use this thread
I will explain my cicada here.

 

Comments on cicada tinnitus are highly welcome.

At least here: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...tus-what-is-the-sound-of-your-tinnitus.24355/ 8 participants chose Cicada tinnitus as the main complaint.

 

I have a cicada sound, too.

 

My cicada starts when the hissing tinnitus is quiet. And sounds like a little, repeated glissando on a microharp. Most likely with pulse-synchronous rhythm.

 

I have constant cicadas, only they’re a higher pitch than any cicada masking sounds I have ever found.

 

I never knew that there was such a thing as "cicada tinnitus" until very recently. I was trying out a new track, which since seems to be gone from the site, that was "river and cicadas". It actually triggered me from quiet to loud. Mine is also maybe pulsatile; I hear a louder and quieter moment that seems to correspond roughly with my pulse rate.

@Bobby B Thank you for the comment about it correlating with high frequency hearing loss. I still have hearing above 8kHz but have had a hard time tuning my frequency. Thanks to this "cicada" thread and published papers on the range of cicada frequencies, I think I hear something around the 8kHz level and am going to retune my listening tracks.

If there is ever a targeted therapy for us cicada noise people, I am in!

 

I have six different tones of tinnitus - never one at a time, sometimes all at the same time. They very in degree, intensity and volume. Nothing triggers them, nothing sets them off. The only thing that remains constant is the one... and that is the cicada tinnitus. It remains constant only in this way... it is alarmingly loud upon awakening. Sometimes it is so loud I want to just hit myself in the head to get it to stop. If I am awakened suddenly then it is amplified even more. Usually simultaneous with the cicada-like tinnitus is a drumming like tinnitus...it sort of sounds like a fleet of Mac trucks revving their engines like a vroom vroom... vroom vroom... then with the two of them going, sometimes a third is added and it is like a fan running... so you have... hiss hiss, vroom vroom, flpp, flpp... then on the really bad days, the walloping dryer sound-clunk clunk... in combination with the sound of like a furnace never shutting off and rising and lowering in volume then a rhythmic sound like music or drums...

All of these together, I swear I am surprised I am not suicidal... it drives me nuts.

Not sure what causes them, I have run through multiple things, COULD BE ANYTHING.

I have to tell you though, I have a severe chronic pain issue also... so when you combine that with the tinnitus, I am truly miserable. All this being said I have given up on doctors... you tell the doctor and they just repeat to their 'side-kick,': "Oh yeah, and she says she has tinnitus." Treatment... of course none. Medicine (for pain or anything else... none). Testing: Spinal x-ray... referral to a pain clinic is my only choice.

Well, I do have a better one that I will stick to... PRAYER.