Do You Remember Your Last Day of Silence?

December 5th or 6th of 2015 when I was in bed one night and heard both my ears hissing away. I've been sleeping with a sound machine ever since. I really miss getting into bed and just lying there in silence and falling asleep without issue. Those were the days. Now I just dream silence and wish, hope and pray I'll have it back one day

 

August 2008. That afternoon/evening, my street was particularly quiet and I still remember thinking that to myself. The next morning, I woke up with tinnitus.
How completely and depressingly ironic.

 

February 22, 2011. That was the day to went to urgent care for a dog bite. I was given a tetanus shot and an antibiotic. Woke up to tinnitus that following morning.

 

It was New Years Day on 2014. Chicagoland weather was unusually warm, and we did a 3 mile hike at the Indiana Dunes National Park. In fact, we were able to have lunch at their picnic area.

Little did I know that at 1:10 P.M. the next day my emotional security base (for over the next 9 years) would collapse under the stress weight of this unthinkable, bizarre condition, which appeared as quickly as switching on a light.

All I could think of was that quote from "King Lear": "We are as flies to the Gods; they kill us for their sport."

 

Don't you miss having TRUE control of yourself, like the ability to nap when you want to, wake up and go back to sleep at will, concentrating, enjoying the moment, having regular day to day problems not involving tinnitus...?

Not being handicapped. It's the simple things. I would, like you I'm sure, turn down a trillion dollars over a cure for this.

I miss turning on the TV by the fireplace watching cartoons or TV movies while I enjoy lunch with warm coco. I miss exploring NYC or not worrying about triggering a spike.

Why did God pick us to go through this. WHY.

They have to be close to a treatment or something...

 

My last day of silence was 12th October 2012; my head slammed into the ground (along with the rest of me), and all I remember is coming to with pain, and the loudest high pitch squeal in my head; I took the silence for granted, and I so miss being able to focus, rest, read, and listen without the constant squeal; very rarely I will wake up and go about my morning chores and realise there is no sound, I cherish those minuscule moments, for as soon as I hear the silence my brain flicks on the audio; coffee, stress, loud noises, and headphones all aggravate the "squeal", as does "listening" to it, so most if the time I just get on with life and ignore my annoying "companion"; biggest effect on my life now is not hearing properly and not getting proper sleep.

 

I'm 71 (today). I can't even remember what I had for breakfast, but can tell you every single detail of The Moody Blues concert I went to w/ Sheryl Felton in 1972.

 

Yes. I had just started my MA program and was well on my way to building a life for myself after a childhood and adolescence of abuse and terror. I was feeling happy and stable for the first time in... maybe my entire life. I had moved into my own apartment with my girlfriend and our cat.

I had just come home from the gym and made myself lunch.

My life ended the next moment. I’ve been dead since.

 

6/1/2023 I awoke to screaming tinnitus at 3am after the second day of taking Lexapro. My life has been changed forever. Even if by some miracle I would get better, this experience has changed me profoundly.

 

My tinnitus slowly increased over many years, so there was really no specific date that I can pinpoint when I went from silence to obvious tinnitus. I can't even pinpoint exactly which day in early February 2022 when it suddenly intensified to a new baseline. I do have memories of times of silence with little to no tinnitus.

 

I've never been a noisy person, and for that, I also am an introvert. At 24 I tried to change my life a little, and have a year of doing things I wouldn't normally do hoping I'd be happier. I always cherished silence. One night I went out with friends, pushed through and stayed out every time I thought I should go home, and stayed in a loud club for 2 hours, left with tinnitus and hyperacusis, and ear pain for at least the following year (ear pain subsided but tinnitus has gotten worse over the years). So yea I remember my last day of silence in September 2019, and I remember every thought that kept me in that loud place like an idiot. And I remember all the times I cherished silence before.

Never leave your comfort zone kids, you're comfy for a reason.

I tell myself if they both cure tinnitus and figure out how to regrow hair cells, thereby curing hearing loss, then we will be free to go back to normal.

 

On 1 to 2 days per week I can experience what silence sounds like. That is due to my ever repeating pattern (loud day - moderate day - moderate day - quiet/silent day). On the one hand, I am thankful for having those days, but, on the other hand, it is horrible to ever again experience the torture the following day. It makes it essentially harder to habituate.

 

I was having headaches on and off for a few months in late 2020. I had a head MRI on January 11th, 2021. I remember thinking, when I put on the 'protective' headphones, that 'these look old and have seen better days'. The head MRI was the noisiest thing I've ever heard and my ears were ringing when I got out a few minutes later.

Unfortunately they never stopped ringing. Thanks NHS.

 

March 19th, 2013. I was dizzy for that entire week. I noticed sometime in the evening I heard a static sounding "sssshhhhhhhhhh". It never went away.

December 18th, 2020. A deaf cat screamed into my ear, and I found out what SEVERE tinnitus is actually like. Incidentally, I'm no longer a fan of cats.

 

My tinnitus began on April 15th, 2007. Before this date, I would occasionally get fleeting tinnitus here and there but that was it. I was able to experience silence whenever I wanted.

I had been experiencing severe insomnia for months before the onset of my tinnitus. On April 14th, 2007, I was tossing and turning in bed. The sound of my fan was irritating me and so at around 2 or 3 AM I turned it off. I finally fell asleep. This was the very last time I experienced silence.

Then the next night I found myself tossing and turning in bed for many hours yet again but this time with a progressively worsening headache. Just like the previous night, I turned my fan off at about 3 AM as the noise was bothering me. I then discovered that I could hear two humming tones in my right ear. I then turned my fan back on to cover up the humming but that made my headache worse. So I turned off the fan, got up and took something for my headache. After my headache subsided enough, I went back to bed, turned my fan back on to mask the tinnitus and managed to get a few hours of sleep. I have had tinnitus ever since.

 

Mother's Day 2023. My family and I went for a walk on the beach, but I had been having ear pain for the last few days and it got worse. I finally told my parents and then my dad got me ear drops the same day. I felt happy, thinking all my problems would go away. We went to the grocery store too, and I remember walking down the aisles, searching for ingredients to make Japanese curry for the first time. I was abundantly happy. My right eat began to ring the next day (my left at the end of May) and unfortunately, I didn't know all the pain that would follow afterwards: tinnitus (sounds varied A LOT over the months), trigeminal neuralgia like pain across face (intense burning), ear pain (very bad that week after Mother's Day), hearing sensitivity and ear popping, facial and shoulder numbness, chest tightness and sharp pain in chest, rapid heartrate (blood pressure over 100-120), tingling across limbs, left TMJ clicking, muscle pain across face/neck/shoulders/back/chest, jaw deviation to the left. My symptoms have seem to gone through stages as I don't have trigeminal/burning pain anymore but muscle pain and ear symptoms remain everpresent. My left TMJ has stopped clicking but the pain worsened after it did, which worries me so much. My condition is 'stable' but I'm still in constant pain everyday. I never saw this coming and all I want is to be cured.

 

January 8th, 2023. I was walking with a friend.

For some reason this is the saddest thread of the all for me

 

January 23, 2022 was the last day I felt normal.

 

My only memory without tinnitus was a long ass time ago. I'd say I was probably around 5 or 6, give or take. I was lying on a couch, at my grandparents' house. The only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat. Then my grandfather says we have work to do around the farm, and that was that.

Probably have had a few more, but never really remembered them.