Day 2 and Scared to Death

I'm sorry if I seem like a baby, but I've had tinnitus for 48 hours and I'm freaking out. I've been extremely stressed lately and took a business trip/vacation that was also incredibly stressful for various reasons. I caught a nasty cold virus on the trip that really took hold when I got home. After being very congested for four days, I was thrilled to fall asleep on Saturday night finally being able to breath out of my nose again. Problem is, I awoke suddenly at around 6 a.m. Sunday with a loud, high-pitched whining in my left ear and my ears popping. The congestion moved into my ears overnight.

Due to some stressful events in my life the last three years, I've started having occasional panic attacks. Well, as soon as I realized the high-pitched whine wasn't going away, I started to freak out, pacing and panicking. It was so LOUD. I'm a writer and an introvert. I live in my head. The realization that there's a sound that I can't escape in my head sets off my fight or flight -- only there's nowhere to run. Oh, my god, the anxiety. I know I'm talking to the choir here. After four hours of out right panic, I wore myself out and was able to sleep with the help of a white noise app. The afternoon and evening, the sound actually seemed to lessen somewhat. I was able to go to sleep last night thinking that I might wake up today and it would gone.

WRONG.

I woke up today, and it's been extremely loud again all day. I had another bad morning of panicking, followed by an afternoon of trying to keep busy by walking outside (seems to help) and driving in my car (also seems to help). Now I'm trying to sleep and it's so damn LOUD. I'm tired of listening to the white noise. I want silence. I love silence. I'm panicking that I'll never experience silence again.

I know, I know. It's only 2 days, and it could possibly go away. I started taking Sudafed and I'm going to buy some Melatonin for tomorrow. I'm hoping once the congestion is gone, this will be gone, too. But I have to say, so many people say it never, ever goes away, so I'm super scared. My anxiety rises the more I research it. I'm so afraid of living with this forever. As a writer, I can't imagine ever being able to concentrate with this sound in my head.

Sorry. I just had to let that out. Thanks for listening.

 

I understand exactly where you are at right now....that feeling of not being able to get away or turn it off, my T onset was similar. I think the chances are pretty good that it will go away this early in the game. I went the sudafed route at the beginning of my T journey and it didn't work. I'm far from being the T expert on these boards, but I've read lots of posts advising folks to get into an ENT ASAP for a prednisone treatment. I finally got into one 9 months and $212 later and was told there is nothing to be done, not to focus on it and if it bothers me too much to see my GP about meds to help cope. Hang in there and don't delay.

 

Thanks so much for the advice, BLane. I'll work on getting prescribed some prednisone ASAP. I'll do anything to give this a chance of reversing. Thanks, again.

 

Welcome to the forum. It may very well be that when your congestion is gone, that T will be gone too or that it will fade into a more tolerable level. So stay positive as much as you can and there is no need to project the future based on the worst suffering time. This will only add more anxiety and stress. I have learned it a hard way when my T was new and that I was suffering so bad, that the future would be all like this. But lo and behold, life is good with me now even with T. The body has learned to harden to this sound and no more panic nor negative emotions forth coming. So the future may not be all like what the scared out mind is suggesting to you. I have suffered a lot initially but today I live a normal, happy and absolutely enjoyable life, and I wrote my success story sharing some insights and strategies. If you are interested in those strategies, check this out. God bless.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...w-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

 

I remember that feeling all too well, and you're not alone. This forum is literally packed with people who know this exact feeling. I think it's important to try and de-stress as much as possible; don't think about the future because your thoughts are clouded by your anxiety. Do some slow breathing/meditation and look into mindfulness. You have to get yourself out of this constant state of fight or flight, so your nervous system can calm down. When we become hyper vigilant - like you are now - our senses become very acute, and this includes our hearing and our perception of sound. So, try to stop focussing on the sound in your head and focus on doing something else, something really thought provoking that you can lose yourself in.

In time you will improve, or it may go away completely. My advice would be to stop worrying about it and don't let it become an obsession. That's the mistake I made.

 

Going to an ENT might be a good option, they can check your ears for wax build up or pressure from fluid build up.
Go from there.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions and encouragement. Day 3 and the high-pitched whine seems louder than ever. That said, from reading other people's experiences, I'm guessing the sound I'm hearing is moderate. I can mask it with certain white noise and even when I'm outside, the birds and general sounds of life (I'm in a rural area) seem to instantly relieve about 80 to 90 percent of the tinnitus.

That said, I'm fighting extreme fatigue. I find it very hard to sleep more than one or two hours at a time. Between the tinnitus, the white noise and the fact that I'm still very congested, my brain won't relax and go into deep sleep. It's also when I'm most prone to panic, being alone in the dark.

My brain and ears actually feel tired. Like I can feel them? I don't know if it's the fatigue, the sound overstimulation or the fact that I'm still ill, but everything feels tender. I feel so exhausted and depressed.

To top it all off, I don't have good health insurance. It's pretty much impossible for me to afford to see an ENT. I'm going to try to see an affordable GP on Thursday. I don't know what she can do.

What a horrible surprise. One moment I think I'm getting over a run-of-the-mill nasty cold, the next my life is turned upside down. If I could just sleep, it would help my outlook so much.

 

Yes, having adequate REM sleep is a big help to calm T. So try to read up sleep sites on good suggestions to getting a good sleep. Perhaps being congested doesn't help as during your sleep you may not breathe enough oxygen. Oxygen deprived brain is also a formula for very loud T. How I know? Because I have sleep apnea for 20+ years and there were times I slept without the CPAP machine or without a good enough seal in the face mask which I breathe through, and the result is a very sleepy me and after I have T, a very loud T day. So try to get good REM sleep. If you need it, perhaps Melatonin will help and it is not a prescription drug. Besides that you can also try natural supplements for calming and for insomnia, such as Lemon Balm, Valerian, Hops, Catnips, Passion Flower, Chamomile, Lavender, Kava, etc. You can do google search or check Amazon.com for each of them to know how people review these products, and see if you can take them as a supplement. Check out this site on using natural herbs for helping to sleep or to calm the nerves. Take good care. God bless.

http://www.christopherhobbs.com/lib...ealth/herbs-and-natural-remedies-for-insomnia /

 

Take it from someone that has been dealing with tinnitus for almost 30 years 88-89. You have a right to be scared and you have a right to feel uneasy. All of a sudden hearing a new noise in your head is a scary thing. When I got my tinnitus, i would first talk to as many people as possible. i'd ask my folks, if they heard the noise i was hearing.

Then i wanted to see, if i was ok and my parents as well. So we went and i had an MRI and everything came back fine. Tinnitus is annoying, YES...but it is not a disease or an illness. It sucks and it is scary at first, but you can and will adapt and handle it.

You are going to be ok, just understand that you are not alone and we have been through your shoes before. Go see an ENT/GP and see what they say. If your tinnitus is because of a illness, just give it time and see what happens. Mine became , what it is today mostly, because of loud music and my own foolishness. No one warned me that, loud music can do such things.

It's ok, I am at peace and love my life and live it each day and do my best to enjoy it

Be Well...

 

Hi there!

I know what you're going through. I am a 16-year-old who has both pulsatile and regular tinnitus, akin to an aggressive wind (which vibrates) in one ear and a high pitched, very loud dog whistle (though sometimes I feel like the tinnitus is having a disco due to the different types of noises that appear every now and again; once it even sounded like a spaceship from a science fiction movie) in the other. Accompanied by a static noise in my head. I've had all this since January 28th of this year and can safely say that it isn't fun, but I am still alive.

I'm a lot like you. I'm an artist (;]] shameless plug, if 'ye wanna see: kibakiru.deviantart.com), a writer, and generally all of my hobbies rely on me being able to think clearly and, most importantly, in silence. I also have high anxiety and a tendency to have panic attacks that don't even need a reason to be triggered.

My GP turned around and told me that I was just looking for attention and that my symptoms made no sense, so I wasn't gonna' get any help from them (though he referred me to a psychiatrist because, and I quote, I may have mental problems (I mean, I have anxiety, but he's convinced I'm insane), and I don't really expect anything to come from an ENT either (waiting to see the audiologist). Before I saw this GP, I had begun to 'habituate' to my tinnitus (I talked about it here: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/help-me-please-tinnitus-is-breaking-me.20497/#post-237182 -- You can read it if you'd like. I've been told it's helped a few people. It also goes more in-depth about my experience as I don't really wanna type it all out again), but the hard slap in the face by that GP (one who had known me since childhood) was all that it really took for me to open my eyes. The realisation that it was just a sound (or multiple) was all I really needed to know. An unpleasant sound, sure; but it couldn't hurt me physically. I don't remember the day I stopped being afraid of it, I just know that I'm still not afraid of it anymore.

In my experience, there was a silence with tinnitus. It wasn't the silence I knew, but it was my silence. I'm sitting in silence right now. Yes, there's a dog whistle in my ear, a static in my head, and a roaring wind in my other ear -- but I'm not listening to it. I find it easy to ignore it most days, though today I'm going through a "spike" (which started last night, unprovoked), so it's louder than normal for me; but i'm not panicking. A mere month ago, I would have went into a full blown melt down.

Everybody deals with this differently. For a normally very anxious and panic-ridden person, I habituated fairly fast (not fully, I'm still getting there). Habituation starts with acceptance. Even if your tinnitus is temporary, it's better to start habituating now than later. It's not easy and won't happen at a click of a finger, definitely not -- learn to crawl before you learn to walk.

There's a good chance that your tinnitus will go away -- all of us have that possibility. And in most cases of loud tinnitus, it either gets lower or you do get used to it. I know that may seem like an impossible feat, I thought that at first as well; but it happened to me and many others. It rarely doesn't happen.

I hope you get better soon!

 

Dear,

I can understand that it is very difficult for you right now and especially if you dont sleep well...

But regarding the sleeping you will get better very soon I am really sure of that !

And yes try to go to see an ENT soon to check your ears...

All the Best

 

Thanks for the support, everyone. All your replies are so helpful and encouraging. I'm taking Melatonin tonight and hoping to string together some hours of sleep.

 

Late last night, I was talking to a friend to distract myself from the noise in my head for a while, which was working. After I hung up, I sat in silence for a moment, and then realized...I'm sitting in silence. The tinnitus was gone. I was happy, but cautious. Well, the silence lasted about three hours, then the high-pitched whine started to come back. But, thrilled with the change (no matter how brief), I was able to sleep for six hours straight.

When I woke up, the t was still there, but I think it's a little quieter than before. At one point today, I think it stopped again very briefly before returning. I don't know what this means, but it's lowered my panic quite a bit. I even sat in a quiet room for a bit today without white noise on, and it didn't freak me out. I didn't love it, but I didn't feel like I wanted to stab my ear with a screwdriver anymore.

Hopeful that this is going to eventually completely go away, but feel like I'll be able to handle it if it doesn't. The softer volume has made a real difference in my ability to cope.

By the way, this experience led me to discover that my brother-in-law has had tinnitus since he was a teenager, and he's never mentioned it. He says he has it in both ears and it's moderate, but he's had it so long it no longer bothers him much, though he sometimes needs to listen to music to get away from the sound and relax. He believes he damaged his hearing from playing loud music and shooting guns without protection as a teen. Seeing him be so calm about it has also been a good influence.

 

Your tinnitus could be caused by a multitude of things at this point. Stress, anxiety, a viral infection (a cold) and sleep deprivation can all contribute. It's still quite possible that your tinnitus will be temporary. Unfortunately, tinnitus can act like the annoying cough that takes weeks to go away when you have an upper respiratory infection. It may linger for a long time after you are feeling better. Of course there is also the possibility that it will not go away.

You and I are very lucky, as far as I can read, that we can mask our tinnitus quite easily. I also can still enjoy the sounds of my rural life. The hardest thing I've found to do is reading. As any introvert finds, my mind wanders enough on it's own never mind having tinnitus to compete with.

There are a lot of different techniques for dealing with tinnitus but since yours sounds very similar to mine (as far as tone and ability to mask) I will tell you what I've done so far.
I went for a hearing test which determined I have mild hearing loss. I trialled hearing aids for a week and found that they made my tinnitus astronomically worse. I stopped using the hearing aids which stopped me from focusing on tinnitus and since then I have seemed to be able to ignore my tinnitus on a daily basis.

Another thing that I did was pledge to myself that I wasn't going to let tinnitus take over my life. There are many people here who spend their entire days wondering if each sound will trigger a spike, if a certain food will make their tinnitus worse the next day and they avoid certain places and activities as a result. If that is what works for them, that's great but it wasn't something I was willing to have control my life. From the very beginning I refused to worry about these things on a constant basis. All that was going to do was make me focus on my tinnitus and be paranoid - which in turn makes tinnitus worse.

Try your best to keep living a normal life. Refuse to say you can't do something because of tinnitus. Really the less that you can focus on tinnitus the better. I even stopped signing on to the forum as frequently because I found just typing in "tinnitustalk.com" would cause me to focus more on it. I wish you the best of luck on your tinnitus journey!

 

Thanks again for all the kind support and information in here. It's been so helpful.

As @BLane suggested, I went to the doctor and asked for a prednisone course. It was just my GP, not an ENT, but she looked in my ears, said there was fluid in the left one, and obliged me with the prednisone.

I was so tired last night from all the lack of sleep, and I thought I'd be able to sleep fairly easily, but the T kept waking me up over and over and over. It was very loud again last night. I've been able to hold down my anxiety better lately, but last night was a struggle. I had to keep going outside and pacing in the driveway. For some reason, being outside makes it better for me. My neighbors must think I'm nuts! (Actually, I'm just trying not to go nuts.) Don't know why real nature sounds are so much better at masking and calming me down than the nature sounds on my white noise app, but they are. I was finally able to sleep a few hours, but all in all I'm still exhausted.

The good news is that I started the prednisone last night, and after I finally did sleep, the volume seems to be lower this morning. Took my second dose a while ago. Hoping for the best. Trying to learn to cope no matter the outcome.

Thanks, everyone.

 

It is a very good sign at this early stage of your T that you have had some very helpful insights or experiences. First being that you did have a very good day in which you realize that you could get busy and then T became either silent for hours or that you didn't seem to be bothered by it. These are what we called the 'Ah Ha' moments which give you like a 'light bulb being turned on' experience and you then realize that T doesn't have to own very moment of your day.

Then you also realize other people around you have had T for so long and yet they could keep on living without letting T own their lives. These are times your brain realize that not only T doesn't have to own your day, but it doesn't have to own your life too. These 'light bulb on' moments will come more often and each moment and its impact will last longer. Try to keep these moments as something very positive, bceause you can build on this as time goes on, and time is on your side of healing if you keep a calm and positive approach.

There will be setbacks, and your latest post shows just that. Be mentally prepared for these setbacks. Think of these setbacks as the little falls here and there as a toddler struggles to learn walking. They are inevitable along the way but as long as the toddler keeps on trying getting up and trying walking again, without very emotional response to each fall, then sooner or later, the todder will master walking, and you will master the art of living a normal life even with some setbacks.

Try telling yourself that if you know that within a year or two, or even sooner for some, that you will be well again like others do, then why worry about the little bumps (the setbacks here & there) along the way of habituation. If you can learn to master the strength to say 'the heck with T, and no more negative emotion', like Jade did in the following success story, after learning that 70% of her colleagues have T but no one suffer like her (like your brother-in-law who isn't suffering from T ) then you will speed up your recovery. Read up her story to see if you can learn something from her approach.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/6-months-tinnitus-still-going-strong-but-so-am-i.3226/

 

Good thing is that T due to fuild in your ear in vast majority of cases ceases once fluid has been drained. It takes multiple weeks, but if you see drop down just after 24 hours of taking , that is extremely good sign.

For sleeping trouble try two things. One, something that everyone here relates to and that is keep some sound on. White noise app, fan, radio, telly, everyone has something different. Experiment with these sounds and find something relaxing. Two, destroy yourself physically during day. Take some physical activity and just go Guantanamo bay on it. When you´ll go to bed your body will be so tired that it will simply turn off T or not. At least during first few days/weeks this help. Eventually your brain will just get used to it, but if I had to guess yours will go eventually away. May take several more weeks though.

 

Thanks @billie48 and @Nikopol! The prednisone course has me very encouraged. It's reduced the tinnitus by about 90 percent during the day. However, when I woke up the last two mornings, it's been a louder again, though not as bad as it was, until I take my next dose. I'm only on a 5-day course, so I'm not sure what will happen when it ends.

Even if the T does stick around, I'm hopeful it will be at a manageable level, and I'm very grateful for that. From the things I've learned here, I believe I can cope with it in time. I know I'm very, very lucky. However, I'm going to be jumpy every time I get a cold from now on. And for that matter, I'm determined to be much more careful with loud noises, though that's not what happened to me this time. With all the loud music I've listened to in my life, I'm freaking lucky I've never gotten tinnitus previously. I'm in no mood to risk it after this experience. I never want to hear the sound I heard the first few days again.

 

@A_R Did your tinnitus ever end up going away?