Hello Everyone

Hi Everyone, I'm so glad to have found this wonderful group of supportive people. Here's my story.

I've had T for 3 months now. It came on a few days after taking an anti depressant which I then stopped taking because of the ringing. It damaged my hearing and I have been left with mild SNHR in my left ear in the high frequencies and mild hearing loss in my right ear. To say that I am extremely pissed off that a medication that was supposed to help me did this is an understatement. My biggest fear is that my hearing is going to degrade to the point where I become deaf and unfortunately I can't seem to find much info on whether this is going to happen.

I have been reading your posts for the last 2 days and I experienced what many of you did. Anxiety, panic attacks, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat (I lost 11kg!), sobbing and all the rest of it. I googled too much and of course thought I was going to die! Some of the stuff on the net can be toxic for someone like us who is new, scared and desperate for answers. I went to a GP who fobbed me off with some Ativan which I have yet to take because I now have a phobia of medications, if I take more meds and they damage my hearing further I will never get over it. The GP would not give me the referral I wanted so I made an appt. to see an Audio. They did a hearing test and when the hearing loss was discovered, referred me to an ENT. What an ass that guy was! He did send me for an MRI (all clear) but refused to even entertain the notion of the anti depressant being the cause of the hearing loss and T, wouldn't even talk about it with me. He simply told me point blank that my hearing loss and T were age related (I'm 37) and sent me on my way, I was in his office for less than 10 minutes. I cried all the way home and it makes me so mad that people get treated like this everyday

I read all the T do's and don'ts and made a list of all the food I should and shouldn't eat. One place said "do eat this, it's great for sure!!" then another said "OMG, for the love of god don't eat this!!" (slight exaggeration but you get my point ) then I look at my list and see the same food is on both list, so now what??? By the end of my obsessive list making I was left with practically lettuce and water lol. At one point I was trying to cut out Free Glutamate and I remember one site said "don't cook meat on high heat or for too long, grill instead" and another site said "don't grill meat, boil for a long period" by that stage I think something in my mind broke a little! Anyway, I now eat meat, vegetables and fruit (cooked however I friggen well please ) but I don't have salt, sugar, dairy, bread, nuts, gravies, sauces or anything pre packaged. One day I hope to not be so obsessive and allow myself the yummy flavoured foods again. It's the beckon of the "What if doing this really works" that keeps me trapped.

I was doing okay, I think I was actually beginning to habituate to the T when my left ear all of a sudden began to feel "plugged" and I started experiencing sudden bouts of kinda like deafness I guess you could say that lasted about 3 or so seconds. BAM! My anxiety is back, panic is back and I am not sleeping properly again. I get this really weird thing when trying to sleep which I have read happens with extreme panic and anxiety. My skin feels like it's crawling and I can't lie still, I HAVE to move and if I do start to doze off I get snapped back into reality with a massive kind of "Swooosh" and I feel like my heart is going to explode ... freaky stuff I'm really upset about this setback.

Currently I take Magnesium, D3, B12, Folic Acid, Vit E. Sometimes I drink Chamomile Tea. I don't think anything has really made any difference at all to my T but I keep plodding along with it. Reading over my post, to be honest I think T has sent me a bit batshit crazy (hopefully a temporary thing )

Such a long post, apologies for that...quite the rant! I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully being able to help some of you some day. xxx

 

Hi erik and Karen, Thanks for your replies

That's fantastic advice Erik and I will try to follow it as best I can. My biggest challenge at the moment is leaving the house. I'm a very solitary person, always have been and I don't have many friends or go really any places at all to be honest. I'm a complete homebody which was fine before the T but now all it does is give me time to focus on it.

Sorry to hear about your T Karen, wow both T and PT, that must be rough! It angers me so much that medication that is supposed to help us can do this. I would trade the depression I had any day for this horrible T, if I could just go back and not take the anti depressants. I have a a lot of trouble letting go of the past and am still very angry and regretful and I know this is most likely hindering my progress.

Lately I spend most of my day in bed trying so hard to get just one more hour of sleep. If I can get just one more hour, just one I tell myself, sleep is peace. But it never comes. I lie here with my heart pounding and just end up sobbing and I know it does me no good at all.

I will get there though. I have to for my boyfriend, my child and myself too