Fifty Years with Tinnitus

Hello! My name is Will and I have had tinnitus since I was about eight years old and a firecracker detonated next to my right ear. I am now 58. I was born deaf in my left ear so the tinnitus is on top of all the noise I hear. It is a high pitched whine, like a cross between a dentist's drill and a smoke alarm. I am very protective of my remaining hearing, but the tinnitus seems to be getting worse as I age. Sleep is very difficult without the assistance of masking noises. I am struggling almost all the time to ignore the noise and get on with life. It is very stressful. I have a wonderful wife who is very caring and concerned and has encouraged me to look for any tinnitus support I can. The discovery of mynoise.net was a great help, indeed, a life-saver. I look forward to interacting with other forum members!

Will B

 

That's a long time. Would you say you've struggled with it all this time, or just more so now that it's gotten worse?

 

Welcome to this forum

You have been a warrior for 50 years! Give yourself a pat on the back, for handling such a horrible ordeal. We know how you feel and it's a daily grind for all of us. Just keep moving forward and don't look back!

 

Welcome to the forum. You are indeed a 'T veteran' of sort. If your T increases with aging but no other obvious causes, you may want to check your hearing to see if hearing aids are needed as they sometime can reduce T. If masking has helped you, you may want to consider these options:

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
(which you already have)

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

 

If you don't have one I advise you to buy a white noise generator, these devices can really make a difference when its time to sleep.

 

Thank you for your post. I have been bothered by the tinnitus since it started, but I think that I am getting more sensitive to noise as I age and lose my hearing. I am hoping that a hearing aid with noise masking capabilities may help.

 

Thanks for the affirmation! There are times when you feel like you are the only person in the world going thru this stuff, but then you run across a forum like this and are reminded that we are all in this together.

 

You are certainly a good ambassador for the site and the cause! Thank you for this helpful advice. I will give them a try!

 

Thanks for the suggestion! Amazon has one on sale today, and I may pick it up.

 

wow 50 years with T.

 

I have a sound machine at night works great, but also people in the forum use a sleep pillow.

 

Thanks for your post! What is a sleep pillow?

 

Plays music, someone hear has a link, its pricey but if it's therapic and you can sleep with it. I use homedics sound machine.

 

From everything i read on this site, it seems people habituate after a period of time. Sometimes months, sometimes a few years. I would imagine after 50 years the mind shouldnt even register the T anymore?

To have intrusive T after such a long time is a scary thought for us newbies

 

I haven't had it for 50 years, that I know of (I'm 52), but I have had it as long as I can remember, so 40+ years.

TBH, I have thought more about my tinnitus since getting onto this group, than I have in a long time. It has gotten worse over time and I'm starting to wonder if I'm suffering hearing loss. You do eventually habituate to it. It's like anything - if you don't focus on it, you don't notice it. The problem and trick there is that when something is screaming in your ears, you tend to think about it. For most folks, though, eventually the brain learns to mostly ignore it. The time when I find it most bothersome is when I've hiked into some remote mountain location with nothing but the sounds of nature and I also hear this shrill screeching noise. It takes away some from the enjoyment of one of my favorite things.

I've accepted that short of a cure or a supplement or something that I haven't yet tried, this will be part of me for the rest of my life. Acceptance is important, because the more you push against something, the more it intrudes in your day-to-day life. Acceptance doesn't mean that you shouldn't try anything and everything to fix the problem; it just means accepting that you have this thing that is currently a part of your life and may be a part of it forever.