Graduating High School with Tinnitus

Hi everyone,
Just signed up for the forum. I'm only 17, just graduated from high school, and as my graduation gift I got T and I haven't been to an audiologist yet but I'm pretty sure I have H as well.

I'm a musician. I care about music more than just about anything and my dream is to be a recording artist or work in a studio as a sound engineer/producer, what have you. I always thought I was being very careful with noise. I used headphones very frequently for the past 3 or 4 years but always on the lowest settings. I don't go to loud concerts. I used ear protection when mowing the lawn. In the past year or so though I would notice ringing in my ears after I had been using headphones for a while, nothing too loud. I would stop listening for a while and it would be alright.

Then senior year rolled around, and I had to do a senior project. I recorded an album of original music, all on my own so I was basically in the midst of a lot of noise all day for a month. I think it was playing the drums on it that really did me in. The ringing got louder and louder, and it would flare up suddenly for about 30 seconds when I was around a very loud sound. I tried to be careful and use foam earplugs and take breaks but by the end the ringing was constant. I finished all the recording but I haven't mastered the album yet just to give my ears a break. Oddly enough it's been even worse since I stopped recording.

It's demoralizing. Everything seems to makes it worse, and it's so hard to escape noise. I've worn earplugs to all the graduation parties and had to leave a few early if they're loud enough, which obviously makes socializing difficult. I feel dizzy most of the time. Little sounds like turning on the tap really bug me. It's hard to hang out with people when leaving the quiet of my house makes me feel a bit nauseous. It's summer break now so I've got some time so recover and be quiet, but my summer job will start soon, and I'm working with small children who probably won't be very understanding. I want to be a musician but it's going to be very difficult to make it work if this continues.

And to top it all off I'm going off to college to study music industry. A loud major. I'm just going to have to be careful. Learn to live with ringing. Learn how to be socially active without hurting myself. So. Yeah. Just venting. Wondering if you all have some words of advice.
Thanks.

 

It's possible that yours will heal up and cease being constant if you're careful about your noise exposure. Plenty of stories online (even if they're hard to find in all the horror ones) of people whose T healed up and went away after 1-4 months. I'd recommend getting prednisone, which seemed to have helped mine a lot during the beginning, cut it from a 6/10 ringing to more of a 1-2/10, but I got it within two days of the ringing starting.

 

And even if the ringing doesn't cease completely, there's still the possibility of some healing taking place and causing it to become much less severe

 

It seems like you need to start Prednisone pretty quickly, and I think I've had at least mild tinnitus for months now so it might be too late... I'll look into it though, thanks!
Also, is it just to alleviate the symptoms or does it help heal the damaged cells in the ear?

 

It's pretty experimental, but it's shown some results with helping tinnitus and hearing damage if it's administered within 48-72 hours of the ringing starting, and showing (much, much rarer though) some help up to three weeks after it starts.

There's also some natural healing that your body can do itself, though a lot of people say theirs didn't get better for 2-3 months, if it did get better. Tinnitus is a weird thing. It can be in the outer, middle, or inner ear, or even in the brain. Some people heal completely from severe tinnitus, some only heal partially from mild tinnitus, some have it disappear after a few months, some habituate to it so well that they barely notice it after only a few months. It seems to be a very odd thing.

 

It seems like it's pretty poorly understood, honestly. But I'm pretty confident I can at least mitigate it for the near future. I've started learning how to be careful and treat my ears kindly. The doctor I saw said that there was no real treatment other than a few months of no exposure to loud noise, but he was by no means an expert.

 

Get some prednisone and stock it up at home in case you are exposed to a loud sound - you will be able to start ASAP without having to struggle getting to an ENT Over the weeks end etc.. They may be closed and you will run out of time as it takes some time to build up in blood maybe 24 hours

That's what I did , I have a stock of a 10 days prednisone in the fridge at home just in case of emergency

Also NAC is supposed to help prevent damage that's what I take daily 1200mg as well as LLLT and a few other supplements like Q10

 

Not everywhere you can get prednisone over the counter with no doc's approval letter...
At least not in Belgium and The Netherlands.

 

Yes I know - same here, ask a doc to give you prednisone and tell him you just had a loud sound exposure a few days ago even if it isn't true.
That's what I told my doc .
If he doesn't just find another one.

 

Sorry to hear about getting T. Just remember that any damage caused to your ear is cumulative. We don't have the ability to regrow lost hair cells in our ears due to acoustic trauma. Be cautious going forward. It seems like with many people (myself included) the first onset of T seems to recede with time.