Feeling Frustrated, Thought I Would Share My Experience

Hi. I have had tinnitus for about 4 years now. I think it may be pulsatile tinnitus, I have a constant throbbing/pounding sound in my left ear, sometimes it echoes across to my right ear and it gets worse when my heartbeat elevates.

When it first started happening I was pretty scared and I was too afraid to look it up myself. I saw a doctor, a nurse and an audiologist who were little to no help. They didn't know what it could possibly be but they thought it would pass. In the end I looked up my symptoms myself and it seems I have tinnitus.

There didn't seem to be anything that could be done, although a bit of further research suggests there could be, but my previous experiences has put me off. It is manageable but sometimes I get so exasperated with constant noise, having to get people to keep repeating themselves, watching the tv with subtitles and the rare sudden pains in my left ear. I just thought I would share my story with some people who hopefully can relate. Sorry if I sounded whiney.

 

Welcome to the forum, Charmel. Don't worry about ranting your feelings here. This is what the forum is for and most of us here understand what you are going through. If you have pulsatile tinnitus, you may want to post your condition at the Pusatile Support forum so you have more response. Have you tried to mask your tinnitus if it bothers you?

When my T was new, I used to mask all day just to prevent panic attacks from hearing my ultra high pitch loud dog whistle T. Try these if you haven't yet. Best of luck. Take good care. God bless.

1) Mask at bed time if having trouble sleeping, by using a sound pillow or sound machine with pillow speakers. There are good sound machine & pillow therapy systems like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Oasis-...d-Oasis-Therapy-System-Speakers/dp/B00MH5HKTA

2) If you need masking on the go, try load an ipod with nature sounds or music using itune. If you have a smart phone, you can download free APPs for soothing or T-masking sounds. Use wisdom in the use of headphones or earbuds as extended use or excessive volume may hurt your ears. Try set the volume slightly below that of your tinnitus.

3) With PC & speakers, you can try these excellent masking sounds to see which one masks best:

TT's excellent audio player: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/

or this online sound library, particularly the self-mix nature sounds: https://mynoise.net

or download free sound generator ‘aire freshener’: http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html

or click play to mix these sounds with this simple sound generator: http://asoftmurmur.com/

or search youtube with words like 'tinnitus masking sounds', 'white noise', 'rain sound' etc.