Did Something Stupid: New Sound, Beyond Upset

Just woke up today to a new loud morse code.

I made the mistake to take a dog over for the weekend. It was supposed to be fun, as I love dogs, but turned into a noise nightmare. The dog unexpectedly reacted to every sound coming from neighbours/outside and would get these barking fits out of nowhere.

It had this higher pitch "scream" type of bark and it happened dozens of times. I tried to prepare and plug my ears / use Peltors whenever I could, but it kept happening when I was not prepared. It hurt my ears and seemed superloud.

At worst the dog would be beside my bed, bounce up and make the scream directly to my ear. I am completely helpless to do anything, as I may have an ulcer (in queue for examination) and Prednisone / NAC cannot be taken because of this. I feel hopeless.

I feel so stupid voluntarily taking that dog here. I adore dogs and even when the possible barking crossed my mind, I thought it wouldn't be an issue and couldn't just let tinnitus ruin it for me. Like... thought millions people have dogs and they're fine. Well, here I am left in a horrible state now. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I was doing so well before this. Now I can't even hear my former T noises as this one blasts so loud. I can't properly mask it and am fixated on it! That will make it stick, won't it... It's a completely new sound and new sounds aren't regular/temporary spikes, like simple volume increase.

 

What's the worst that can happen?!

Whatever damage might happen to your stomach lining, it is likely going to be temporary, right? Since T has the potential of being permanent, perhaps you might consider taking those pills? And you don't even know whether you have an ulcer. It could be that your stomach pain is just due to stress due to T...

Also, please don't be too hard on yourself. You could not have known that the dog would bark and that its bark would hurt your ears...

 

Thanks for the reply Bill... I am very tempted to just try anything to get rid of this. But I'm not sure what to do, it's horrible. I think there is a serious health risk, since the doctor did diagnose me with bleeding ulcer, based on symptoms. I am already on medication and as queue for examination is so long, it is more for ensuring the ulcer has healed.

Bleeding ulcer means the stomach/duodenum lining is already broken. So putting in an erosive substance might cause perforation and that can be life-threatening. Both for NAC and Prednisone there is warning: not for ulcer patients. Not only are they erosive, but also remove protective mucus (which with hole in lining may very well be the last protective barrier).

I've had stomach pain from both of those before, as well, before this ulcer ordeal. And can now have pain attack just from vitamin C, if not diluted with tons of water. One NAC capsule prolly wouldn't make much difference with T, right (yet might cause very scary ulcer complications)? Would even need a high dose for days, I'd imagine. I don't know where to ask, as doctors don't even understand what NAC is!

So the situation is just dire. I feel defeated to get this situation now. I feel like I'm being punished, since this whole ulcer + acoustic trauma combo is like custom-made poison.

 

@NimQ ,
You can get red prednisalone coated tablets to protect your stomach .
Love glynis

 

Can I suggest you give it a few more days. Take some mediation to relax you and try your very very best to not think about it; I know how hard that is when a noise screaming. The chance you've caused damage to your ears is very low Good luck.

 

Well, I can't say anything concerning the meds as I'm not qualified to do so, but you should consider that it might not stick and might go away? I personally had a new sound appear after listening to some nature track on my speakers and accidentally turning them up while sleeping. I had a couple of birds chirping away in my left ear for about a week. I was panicking just as much as you are right now. I even got an urgent appointment with my ENT and everything. The sound actually disappeared and I was left with baseline.

I'd say just start taking the supplements that seem to be the go-to around here for T (magnesium, gingko, vitamin b-complex, b12 and maybe some of the less studied ones that are being mentioned such as St. John's wort etc.) and try to stay as calm as you can. Try to perform some activities that you usually enjoy to distract yourself from the sound and maybe try to get an ENT appointment if possible to check for auditory damage, which I'm not sure happened.

Just try not to assume the worst, as that won't help the situation at all and will just stress you out. Rather assume it might go away like some other people's, or mine even in this case.

 

I think it's just a temporary sound

 

You could ask your doctor about prednisone/steroid injections...

 

Thank you everyone for your comments, I really appreciate it and it calmed my mind yesterday coming here to read them. I found a sound mix that masks well enough and spent the day mostly sleeping. I'm basically now carrying my mobile phone playing masking sounds everywhere (so I am not able to check T at all) and taking some days off to relax, staying home.

About Prednisone, in general, it's impossible to get any pills or injections here in my country - it's ridiculous. It is not prescribed for these problems and so doctors refuse to do so. I had desperate situation almost a year ago with a definitive acoustic trauma after dental work and finally found one ENT who finally after tough negotiations agreed to prescribe Prednisone. She said she will just this once allow it as "an experimental treatment", but it will not happen again. I have saved whatever was left from that course and that is my last patch.

 

Thank you @Daniel95 for the friendly comment of yours. This was incredibly helpful and made me feel so much better. Perhaps quite accidentally you gave me an idea what might have happened; almost the same thing as to you actually! The thing is, since the dog kept reacting to outside sounds, I kept playing stuff from my phone as a distraction, so it would calm down. It was this nature track - just like yours - with high pitch birds singing. Therefore, I basically listened to it for the whole weekend and the morse sound which started on Monday was a bit like that - these very high pitch erratic robot birds. So very possibly this is either my T getting overly excited by listening to such sound for days and/or reacting to the dog screaming, but either way gives me hope that this will go away. Can and will just hope for the best, now!

Futhermore, will just stock up on safe supplements like magnesium, vitamins, zinc and l-carnosine, try to keep distracted and relax my nerves the best I can. It's a bit embarrassing how I would panic, in a way... Since shouldn't I know better, by now? If anything the utter panic and anxiety about T has just made it harder to cope and quite possibly slowed down (or at some point halted) any progress with healing and adaptation. So it's a bit of a slap in the face to realize that even after stabilizing, it takes just one single setback and there I go back to being extremely afraid, once again. I don't want to go back to that place, no matter what - it's like a swamp, not an easy climb back to sanity.

 

NimQ, I’m in exactly the same position as you. Try not to panic and take some deep breaths. I know this is pretty much impossible right now but please try as the more you work up your CNS the worse you will feel. The new sound I have also has an intermittent morse code quality to it and it’s directly in my left ear. Load up on vitamins and try doing some cold shock therapy; I tried to find a place nearby but couldn’t. You may have better luck. If not, regular swimming or some other form of exercise can work wonders on your emotional reaction. I really hope you start feeling better and try not to blame yourself like I do; it will do neither one of us any good.

 

True and wise words, @Ed209. It's indeed easy to get carried away with the panic, so I'm doing all I can now to allow myself any distraction that works. Sometimes I even theorize that the fight or flight reaction basically tells our brain to keep the new sound, as it becomes meaningful and alarming... That perhaps without CNS going to overdrive, the sound wouldn't stick in the first place.

I am sorry to hear that you have an unwanted visitor as well. These type of changing morse sounds are the worst, they are hard to ignore as it feels the erratic pattern is drilling into the brain. Can you mask yours? I had no way of calming down yesterday until being able to create a mix that sufficiently masks mine. The advice you gave me makes sense and I hope these steps will help you, too. Self-blame is like fuel for tinnitus, so yeah, let's try and not give it that advantage.

 

Snap. Trying to calm me down was impossible, but somewhere deep down you have to find your inner strength. My t overall is very difficult to mask so I don’t bother, but after this new noise started I did. I tried to cover it up because I didn’t want to hear it and have it keep me in a constant state of absolute terror. I turned my masking off last night and haven’t used it since. This is not advice, however, it’s just what works for me.

I’m not over it yet but I’m chugging along. My emotions are an absolute rollercoaster right now.

 

I hope being able to move onward from masking is a sign of things slowly getting better for you. At least mentally and that is, in my opinion, the most important part of managing tinnitus. I will use 24/7 masking for now, so I can give my brain chance to move on and also just to be able to relax myself, since the whole weekend got me in a severe state of anxiety. I keep reminding myself that with my old T sounds I thought I'd never accept them and would never achieve a state in which they don't bother me. Yet for a long while now they have been more and more meaningless. I have gotten so used to it and also started to find comfort in the sounds being more stable, thinking that perhaps I could start living without constantly fearing consequences of noise exposure (hence why I thought this whole "dog over for a weekend" thing would be harmless fun).

I suppose what is still left is a terrifying fear of getting it worse... and it was now triggered by this incident. I think full acceptance would include the fact that we're in risk of getting louder/new T sounds and that living a life will lead to those situations occasionally. Can't say I am there yet... I just want to get stable again, fully habituate and then move on, without ever facing one more acoustic trauma scare. Oh well, can't get everything I want, eh.

 

T really is an enigma isn't it . Some would say it's impossible that it reacted the way it did, but then again some would say a lot of the things that most of us experience aren't possible. I hope you're doing better today. My own T is fairly new, so I get when you say you need to use masking 24/7. It's what I'm doing whenever I'm home. Just carrying my phone around playing some whatever nature track I can find on youtube.

In any case, fingers crossed that it improves soon and that it's just a small hiccup in the long run. Stay strong!

 

How you doing @NimQ?

 

Sorry, I forgot to push the "Watch thread" button and thought I'd get alerts for messages. My bad! And the news are good. For some days straight I kept masking 24/7 and then gradually started to lower the volume. It seems that either stress levels going down or simply not fixating on the new noise worked wonders.

I'm seriously not sure anymore what happened though, as I have had severe & worsening bruxism problems lately and now getting my bite adjusted as nothing (mouth guard, physio etc.) works. The stress response for dog barking made me clench more - and as my bruxism is at its worst during night, I'm sure getting alarmed many times per night didn't help. Perhaps it triggered the new sound, at least partially. The T volume in my right ear seems to now follow the pattern of my jaw pains, so it seems to be getting more somatic than before. I don't know... I'm just confused. But the most important thing is, of course, that after a week I am mostly back to my usual sounds.

 

Great! I am happy for you.

This is good to know. It really looks like it makes sense to always be hopeful whenever one of those spikes starts up...

 

@NimQ It's great to hear you're almost back to your normal sounds again! It seems like our bodies (ears & brain) have some sort of recover capability after all #hope

Anyway, should something like this happen to you again, try asking your doc for Lanzul 30 mg (Lansoprazolum). You take one pill in the morning on an empty stomach and then you take your Prednisone.

This is what I was prescribed when I first got T and it was explained to me that the first drug is there exactly to protect you from the possible damage corticosteroids might do to your stomach.

 

i had a new sound yesterday..came out of nowhere but prob lack of sleep...it was low and in my left ear...i shrugged it off and played some video games for a couple of hours...my new sound was gone...seems like if you can force your mind to focus on something else and relax things tend to go back to normal...glad to hear your doing better..my wife luvs dogs and i am dreading the day we get one...luckily i live in a place that doesnt allow dogs but down the road i know we will eventually have one..i cant handle dog barks still...it feels like getting hit by a wall when they bark still despite my hyperacusis improvements