Do You Know Other People Who Have Tinnitus?

Hello,

I'm fairly new to Tinnitus and still dealing with the emotional aspects of it, so I wouldn't like this thread to turn into a thread that would freak me out or scare me with sad or scary anecdotes, please.

I'm just surprised on how many people I know, or know of that have Tinnitus, which I found out that they had it after I developed it. I'm just curious to see how many other people with Tinnitus know of other people with the same condition.

1. My ex-girlfriend's father has it on one ear. She says he lost partial hearing and doesn't like multiple sounds at the same time. He does enjoy earphones as he can control what sounds he hears.

2. Another ex-girlfriends' mother just developed it on both ears. She had it for about one month when a fire alarm in her house caused it to increase in volume. The doctor changed her blood pressure medication to see if it gets any better, so far it hasn't.

3. A Facebook friend of mine, whom we met online because we are both from the same home town in Mexico, I just recently learned she had it, and she's had it for 6 years. Her audiology report looks like a crescent moon she says. She developed SSNHL 6 years ago and just last year she had a Meniere's disease episode, so doctor's now say she has Meniere's.

4. My father has it on both ears, he's had it for like 6 years but his is very mild, he's not bothered by it. His might be due to all the meds he's been taking for blood pressure, cholesterol and pain.

5. My oldest sister might have a very mild case of it. She's not bothered by it during the day, only at night when it's quiet, she says she hears like a distant dance hall echo. She sleeps with the TV on.

6. My youngest sister, in Mexico during a dance, a speaker blew next to her ear 10 years ago. She says she gets loud tinnitus at least once a month for about an hour and then it goes away.

7. My best friend's wife's grandpa had it for 3 years before he died. He died of cancer but they think all the antibiotics he took caused it. He would play classical music all day at home.

8. A school friend of mine has a severe case of TMJ. She gets Tinnitus a few times a month but for only a few minutes. Last month though, she had it for a full day.

9. The first ENT I saw, he says he has it and developed it by working at his fathers ranch as a young boy. He says it doesn't bother him because he knows its nothing bad, just something that can be very annoying and he says he knows there's nothing he can do about it.

10. The third ENT I saw, he says he has it too. He says he now treats it as background elevator music and only notices it when someone mentions it.

11. The Stanford tinnitus "expert" I talked to, he says he's had it for 20 years and sleeps with a fan on every night.

12. I work at a college as a financial aid manager and I was talking to a graduate regarding her loan payments. She developed some form of drug resistant tuberculosis and breast cancer, a few months apart. Last time we spoke on the phone, she said she couldn't hear me because due to all the antibiotics she took, she developed tinnitus. She had a hearing aid which she put on and was able to hear me better.

13. My girlfriend is an elementary school counselor. She says she has a student, around 8 years old who has hearing loss with Tinnitus. They're working on getting her a hearing aid.

14. The brother of a teacher at the college I work at, he has Tinnitus too. He thinks his came about from a prank in college. He used to work at the college's radio station and one day his friends called him on those old rotary phones and played a loud screeching sound that hurt his ear. His Tinnitus developed years later but he thinks that's what triggered it all. He became a physician's assistant and having babies crying 2 feet from his ear caused him to go deaf. He now wears hearing aids that eliminate his Tinnitus during the day but he takes them off to sleep. He says he hears like a pipe leaking all night. Not sure if he masks it.

15. I saw a therapist a couple of times. She says she has a patient who has tinnitus due to a car accident. The accident also caused him to lose vision in one eye and will shorty lose vision on his second eye.

16. My dad was telling me one of his friends has it too, he notices it more in his bedroom than in any other place.

17. I got a sleep study done late last year. The sleep tech said in his 10 years of doing his job, he's encountered a couple of people with Tinnitus.

18. I love boxing and I frequent boxing forums often. I learned that one poster fell asleep with his headphones at full blast and woke up with Tinnitus.

19. Another poster said he has TMJ and has tinnitus because of it. He sleeps with radio static.

20. Another poster didn't say how he got it but he wears hearing aids that also have a swooshing sound that helps with his tinnitus.

21. Another poster said he used to have it, he never knew how he got it but it eventually went away on its' own.

I believe that's all I remember.

 

1.My father has had it for three years, doesn't know what caused it but it came after a vertigo episode.
2.My highschool friend, also unknown cause.

That three counting me, which is a lot considering i only asked like 7-8 in total

 

I know a number of people that have mild tinnitus. It feels like I'm taking about a completely different condition.

 

Seven people. Four of them serious. I do not socialise a lot these last few years. Therefore I regard this number as high.
Now I am harder of hearing I recognise when other people are hard of hearing. That number I find also surprisingly high.

 

I don't know anyone with "bad T", but I know some people with T. They look at me like I'm from another world when I tell them how bad mine is.
I think they don't really believe me and I suspect they think I'm dramatizing a situation that they think "is not that hard to manage".
One of them (who is in my family) told me "it's not that bad".

 

My twin brother told me that he had tinnitus when I told him I was stressed/ drinking heavily because of T.

Mine started 2/28 slash 3/1 ... so I'm a month in. Let me say, I still notice it, but I've read a few books already on moving forward, chronic pain management (related I think, consider tinnitus = pain, another unpleasant sensory impulse). At least today, it's not bothering me too much. I think I'm mentally habituating.

Anyway, he said his went away after 7-8 months. That makes me hopeful, but I'm not sure how his came about, or how severe, or if maybe he habituated to it.

I would rate mine as mild-medium. It's definitely not the 'mild' you only hear if you plug your ears or sleep -- I think I've had that for a while. I can hear it over the TV, sometimes in conversation if the ring is quiet.

One-ear T is unusual, isn't it? There's no real way to verify precisely that it's one ear. Plug either ear, doesn't matter, you'll hear the same whine. But you can still sort of tell the direction.

 

Yup. I'm surprised sometimes when I mentioned it and I get told that someone else has it. Even my doctor has it!

 

There was a thread discussing the possibility of an epidemic. There's definitely a lot of people who have it, but its mostly mild, which i would categorize as anything that you can sleep reasonably well with. I just need a laptop cooler next to me and i can sleep most nights, guess i'm lucky considering what some people here go through.

Where ever you go u see a bunch of people with headphones in/out of the ear(not sure hows this called in english) blasting music, and u can't just walk up to all of them and slap them.

 

I feel you, my dad has it, very mildly, he thought I was exaggerating on how bad I had it. The only thing he told me was, "You need to accept life in whatever manner it presents itself, and just go forward with it." But he's been very good in protecting me from loud noises.

 

@EddieMar yeah, I know a lot too, just hang out with musicians and motorcyclists and gun owners and you'll come across plenty. I also met a motorcyclist once who would not doubt have accepted any ear injury to undo the damage to his skull and face (wear full-face helmets, kids, put your kickstand up, and don't go face first into guardrails, ugh...)

I get the wisdom in what you're saying, but there's no fundamental connection between these two things. Lots of people with moderate or severe T return to normal sleeping habits; my T is a 14khz shriek I can hear in basically all environments, but I easily sleep 7-10 hours a night, often with earplugs in so I don't wake up from external sounds. It did take a while to get there, though

 

Amost all my friends after shooting shotguns and rifles, riding Harleys with loud pipes, and running noisey equipment for years almost all of them have T and have to sleep with fans running, TV on or sounds off of youtube..I have pretty much habituated to it and as I wake it is silent and a couple of minutes it amps up for the day and I tell myself my brain just turned on like a light switch and focus on everything I can except the T. If I am in deep thought or performing a task I wont hear it at all. But dont get me wrong sometimes it bugs me and I will find something to do to get my mind off of it....

 

I also know several people: my mom, a close friend, my boss.. I only learned after I was telling them my problems.

My mom has it quite severe actually.
She said she needed about 2 years to get over it. But still it seems I got it worse.

But even if tinnitus is common, problematic tinnitus is not. But to be honest, only few people know that I'm struggling so much. Maybe some can read the signs, but probably not many.
Cynically I suffer in silence

 

my dad developed right after me.... weird huh?

 

Same. I saw one of my siblings recently (on my birthday) and they basically said they have tinnitus and they know people that have "severe" tinnitus and were never bothered by it. Funny, because I know a number of people that seem to discover they have tinnitus too after they see me suffering with it.

I use loudness or maskability as more of a metric to judge the severity of tinnitus. It's all subjective, but how easily it is to mask seems to be a large indicator in how quickly people habituate to it. Everyone has a hard time sleeping initially.

 

What is bad T?

 

Spot on.

 

Occasionally I say "I'll see you in a few years" inside myself when I see people like this.

 

Bad T is T that the sufferer can't ignore. Many people have T that they don't really notice or care about...

 

One way to measure the intensity of one's T, is to count the number of times in, say, a 10 minute interval that you are reminded of it.

 

My aunt was like that. After I shared my symptoms with her, she realized that she has had mild T for years. She never knew that her condition had a name, and it never really bothered her.

 

How can you tell?

 

Another way is how well you can mask it. If you can hear it in the shower and over everything then it's pretty loud. If you can't hear it when you are 'outside' (I've seen a lot of people describe it this way), then it's probably fairly mild.

 

I am in a group of Relaxation especially for people with T... But it will stop in June...

And I am clearly the youngest in the group...

Otherwise my father apparently has T... But he got it around 57-58 years old... Mine I had it at the age of 29...

 

It is the principle of "don't try to kid a kidder".
People often fill in words they do not understand. I do this too. Or people think they understood, but actually did not.
I even sometimes think I see a question mark floating above someone's head when he or she did not understand what exactly was talked about. It is misunderstanding of just a few words that can confuse a situation.

There is this commercial on one of the ITV channels in the UK.
In this commercial there is confusion. The person hard of hearing does something unexpected because he misunderstood.
It is supposed to be funny, but because I am harder of hearing now, I think it is not funny at all. Just sour grapes.

 

My mom. She got it from a head trauma.

 

My Sister has started with tinnitus and pulsitile also off and on.
She's not sleeping and nerves off.
She knows I can help support her and give her information and what to ask her doctor about.
As she's my twin I hope she doesn't develop Menieres like myself.
Love glynis

 

I know a couple of people with T:
- my wife
- my father in law
- my mother in law
- my mother
- my aunt
- my sisters' mother in law
- my ENT
- a colleague of mine from work

I believe all of them have it mild / moderate and none of them are depressed because of it, I'm the only one that I know struggles to accept it.

 

I don't know a single person with it though other than very close friends and family no one knows I have it. That could be why.

 

My tinnitus does not sound as high in the shower or when I am outside but i still hear it.

 

Why does no one know you have it?