Flying with Bad Tinnitus and (Especially) Hyperacusis, Experiences?

What sucks with moderate hearing loss (mine goes up to 65dB at 6000Hz but speech understanding is ok) is that it can seem normal to us... But we would be shocked to hear how things sound crisp if we got a perfect hearing back !

I manage to not think about T when the movie or the show is really great... I can't watch junk any more ! That's a good point. But a few months ago, even watching my favorite movies I could only pay attention to T. Very frustrating.

I'm from France but I lived in the UK for a year, that's why I remember well London and the underground noise !

 

Have you tried a hearing aid? May help with the T. Yeah the tube is very loud at some pointe, glad i am only using it for a short amount of time. Where did you live in the UK?

 

I don't want hearing aids for now, H would make it difficult. I'm almost ok with the T (well, if you see what I mean by "ok"), the only thing is that it keeps changing (volume and frequency) and new noises appear very easily. Sometimes they go away after a few days, sometimes they stay for good. But I sleep well with no masking machine now.

I was in Glasgow (it's in the UK right ? ).

 

@Foncky

I've read all that you've wrote and can say you have integrity. You live by what you say which is a very strong attribute that some unfortunately lack in this day and age.

I may come across as strong or even opposing maybe, but it's not my intention in the slightest. My life was disrupted immensely just over a year ago and I found some solice here at tinnitus talk. What I found however as the months went on is that it started to have a very detrimental affect on my day to day living. I actually started to fear going to restaurants, the gym, the cinema etc etc, because I was constantly reading how I shouldn't be doing those things. I'm very strong minded but needless to say, it started to change my behaviour. On a subconscious level I was obviously becoming phobic to different aspects of life because of sound. As I look through people's posts and their descriptions of their symptoms, it seems the vast majority absolutely still can live a normal life. It just involves some adjustments. I post to save the sanity of anyone who is in a similar position to me.

In the end I decided I needed to stop reading about tinnitus and especially needed to leave the forum before I lost my mind. Once I started to live freely again (but sensibly) I made some huge improvements and found I hardly thought about tinnitus at all; even though it hadnt changed.

I don't like to see anyone fall into the obsessive thought processes, that I did, by reading too much on here when in most instances it really doesn't apply. The percentage of people with catastrophic tinnitus/H is not very high. I sometimes feel that when we all mix on a forum like this it's bad for both parties, because the agendas are so different. One side is trying to protect what they have left at all costs, and the other is trying to come to terms with how their life will be from then on.

I find that the advice from both sides is wrong depending on which side of the fence you fall on. Advising to limit important activities can be devastating to the life of a moderate sufferer who could certainly get by with ear defenders. Likewise, advising people with severe catastrophic T/H that's it's fine to continue is most likely equally bad.

There's a confliction due to the nature of how T affects us all differently.

 

I thing he is more worried about traveling with high H ,not so much about his high T.which obviously you don't have.

 

And I think the posters flight already did or did not happen since this post is from a year ago.

 

I have taken many 16 hours flights with ear plugs and last time with plugs and muffs on the top.
No issue after flight what so ever . Key thing is to protect the ears .
I only had slight spike because I was tired . It only lasted for day but I get spike when I am tired any ways .
I am not sure how important for you to go is but that's the experience I had and my T is very very reactive to loud noises .

 

Good thinking,

I am a pilot with tinnitus, and also know few others. Anyway most of us got our t from other than aviation noise. Usually gigs,clubs etc. Like I got mine fron club night, surely there might be some affect with flying md11 at the time with fucked up radios and hf traffic with indian atc.. anyway I didnt have any experience of tinnitus (except fleeting tinnitus) before that. Then suddenly boom.. it was there after I got back to hotel room.. and stayed like that.. seems truly that lot of people are worried about flying but nobody seems to think that flight crews are actually one group that suffer from t pretty much. Still they continue their work.

 

He is more worried about H and not T that you have,

 

Can we have an update please. Did you fly or not and if you did what happened?

 

Ah. Sure. In the end I did take that flight. And the flight there went fine, as before I wore noise-cancellation headphones the whole flight and that seemed to do the trick. However, after the return flight when I got home again it did feel like my T had worsened. While at the airport waiting for my flight home I had an incident with a sudden very loud PA announcement right above my head, personally I think that is where it went wrong rather than in the plane itself. But I can't be sure of course.
I haven't flown anymore since that time, and my stance now is that I'd only consider flying again if I had a incredibly important reason to do so, and if I do I will make sure to wear my headphones continuously not just in the plane but also at the airports.

 

Thanks for the update. This will add to our experience.It looks as though your assumption is correct. If you flew there with no problem you should be able to fly back with no problem.

Unless the return flight was with a more noisy airplane, or was it the same?

 

It was the same kind of plane, and I was sitting in about the same seat, as far forwards away from the engines as I could afford. So yeah, my feeling is something went wrong at the airport.