Hello T, and My Fellow T-Partiers!

[JohnK]

Hi all,

30 year old male. Been lurking for the last few weeks, but I decided it's time to bite the bullet and join.

So I've always been a high-stress, high-anxiety person. From August 2015 to the end of September 2015 it got worse and worse. I had consistent sleep-maintenance insomnia starting then and lasting to right now. This culminated in a horrifying slow-motion panic attack in late September. Tight breath, body pain, weird muscle spasms everywhere, the works.

Then in early october, I notice every so often my ears would start to ring. For a few minutes or a few hours, but I didn't worry too much about it.

It seemed to continue on and off through October. In late October I was both having another panic attack and went on a high dose of doxycycline for a week (they thought I might have Lyme), and that kicked the tinnitus into 24/7. So I guess it was either anxiety/stress, doxy, or a toxic stew of both.

Several panic attacks and feelings of full-blown depression/anxiety disorder later, here I am! The last 3 weeks have been truly hellish. I worry if I'll ever hear the sound of silence again, if I'll ever enjoy life as much as I did before.

At the same time, I know how lucky I am to have this and not, say, cancer or something really bad. Still, doesn't make this any less infuriating though!

Funny, I've always been so good about taking care of my ears. Always wore ear plugs at concerts and clubs etc. And I manage to get T anyway. Oh well...it's been 3 weeks now, but here's hoping that it goes away in the next 49 weeks!!

I am trying to be as proactive as possible with this. I've always exercised but I'll be definitely be keeping up with that. Also starting classes for mindfulness and have my first appointment with a TRT specialist lined up for next week. If the noise won't stop, it WILL be habituated to.

Special hello/moi to @Markku. As an employee of a wonderful Finnish company who's been to Finland a few times, I will always have a soft spot in my hearts for Finns (insert new national Finnish emoji here)

 

[JohnK]

Realized I didn't describe my T at all. Here it is:

It's very high-pitched "eeeeee" (somewhere between 12k and 14k I think). As for hearing loss, I can hear noises up to ~15k. Not sure what it *should* be for 30 year old males, but it seems to be par for what my non-T friends score.

The volume isn't loud enough to be debilitating, but when it's that high pitched, it doesn't have to be too loud to be annoying, now does it?

The tone and volume are somewhat inconsistent. Sometimes the "eeee" seems sharper and more annoying than other times. The volume definitely seems to wax and wane between 1/10 and 4/10. Seems to be less bad in the morning when I'm just waking up.

I think it is responsive, in that it seems to jack itself up so I can be sure to be annoyed by it even in a noisy restaurant (that said, I don't have H as the restaurant noise itself doesn't bother me, just the T)