How I Dealt With Tinnitus for 22 Years

If you are newly diagnosed with one form of tinnitus or another, don't lose hope. Read my story and see what I went through and maybe you can get some perspective. I've gone through 22 years of living with tinnitus with six different manifestations that at times almost drove me crazy. I wish I knew then what I know now because life would have been a lot easier. And the most important thing I've come to realize: Time is your friend.

Believe it or not, here's the short version:

1998. 48 years old when I awoke to birds chirping in my right ear. Perhaps it was more like Morse code but in a chirping kind of way. I wasn't too upset about it as it was sort of interesting and was definitely better than a constant, high frequency pitch. While waiting for it to go away I noticed that when playing piano, I heard ocean waves and tone distortion in that ear each time I played a chord. I began to worry a bit more. Thinking back as to what the cause might be, I remembered in the service I stood next to large, 105mm canons without hearing protection a couple of times. Later, one job I had involved listening to extremely loud speaker systems for quality control. Even worse, I went to drag races sometimes and didn't use hearing protection. I started reading as much as I could about tinnitus and went to a doctor who said it could be caused by a tumor in the ear pathway but the chances of that were very slim. I passed on taking the test for that but took a hearing test and my hearing itself was normal. The wave sounds dissipated after several months and I habituated to the chirps a few months after. One day I noticed all the noises had vanished and I hadn't even noticed when it happened. That episode told me that not all bouts of tinnitus last forever.

2012. Soon after I retired, I woke up one day with my right ear almost deaf. People and noises sounded like they were coming from way off in the distance with severe echoing and roaring sounds. But when my wife spoke to me or the toilet flushed, those noises and effects went away. When she stopped talking, the noise returned. This was serious and I called Kaiser Emergency. The response was to call my doc on Monday when her office was open. This was bad advice as there was a viral infection wreaking havoc on the fine hairs inside my ear. There was a golden hour for this infection that I missed by at least two days which, if I had started on prednisone right away, most of the damage would have been mitigated. Hearing tests confirmed there was a pattern of loss that pointed to a virus. As the weeks passed the symptoms dialed down a bit. Volume was down from its peak substantially but still front and center. That is the level it maintains to this day, sort of. As long as there is ambient sound between 100 and 500Hz there is no roaring - actually more like a tone now at 112 Hz. When the external sound stops, the tone returns.

2013. A more typical form of tinnitus in my left ear started up this time as a constant, high pitch noise consisting of two frequencies singing together at around 6 kHz, one slightly higher than the other. Not as loud as my 112 Hz tone but hard to ignore nonetheless. My anxiety ratcheted up a notch.

Mid-2013. A midnight awakening with a new sensation, a scratchy, high frequency sound in my right ear. Fingers on a blackboard kind of sound. Crap, this one scared me. When I sat up in bed, it went away. Laying back down it returned. This would appear about once every night, For a long time I worried that it would morph into something constant. Luckily, it never did but after all these years I still get it, mainly when I sit in my massage chair and rarely at night. Mental/physical state of being obviously plays a role in this one.

2014. Short-lived tonal bursts began, twenty or more times per day. This is where your hearing dulls dramatically in one ear and then the tone appears lasting anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of hours (rarely). Usually around 440 Hz but differs in frequency sometimes. Still get these episodes but not nearly as frequently as the first year or two.

2015. I wondered why there was a truck running outside my house and every morning the guy would start the engine, turn it off and then start it again at random and for random lengths. It dawned on me after some time that it was me. This one is a really low frequency that I never would have thought possible with tinnitus, somewhere around 40 Hz. It would have been easier to ignore it if it ran continuously but the start and stop nature of it kept my attention. It wasn't really loud and if I was busy doing something, I could ignore it. It would last from one day to several weeks each time it appeared. It is gone much more than it is around these days.

There were times when all of these forms of tinnitus would work at the same time. A cacophony that didn't happen too often and when it did, sometimes it was because of a cold.

Over the years I have read many posts from very worried people old and young with new onsets of some form of tinnitus. They are in urgent need of answers to questions about how long will it last, what drugs are useful, etc. Understandably, they're very worried that it will never go away and are convinced that if it doesn't, their lives will never be the same. That was me. I worried about it to the degree that I pressured my doctor to prescribe Xanax. I thought that would help to relax me. When that didn't work, I migrated to Prozac to help me deal with rising depression. A couple of months on that stuff convinced me it would be worse than the disease. I tried headphones with music and sounds but I didn't want to go through life with headphones. There were other things like re-training but that seemed like a lot of work. Eventually I came around to the understanding that what I needed was time. I resolved to plow through it and not make myself crazy trying to keep myself from going crazy. It was going to be just me and my brain and we were going to fix it.

Today tinnitus doesn't bother me in the least. It simply is not there. My brain has overwritten it. If I stop and listen, I can pick it up so I know it is actually still there but I have to make a conscious effort to hear it. Sometimes I can't hear it even when I try. It depends on the time of day, whether I'm super-tired and sometimes if I have a cold. When I do notice it, it's almost a reassurance that everything is normal. It does not affect my life at all. My brain has seen to it that it doesn't stay front and center. The best part is, there wasn't anything I did purposely to make it disappear, the brain did it all by itself given enough time. It's common knowledge, if you are exposed to something long enough, it disappears. I just wish I had the ability to ignore it earlier in the game and could have saved myself from worrying about something that, in the end, doesn't make a darn bit of difference in my life.

Someone mentioned on these forums once that if you have tinnitus but you can still hear, consider yourself lucky. There are so many people who cannot hear at all and I complain about hearing some noise that isn't supposed to be there? It's all relative. I adopted that mentality as soon as I read that post because I knew it to be true.

There's no predicting with certainty how long tinnitus may last or whether it will change over time. If you have tinnitus and are worried about it - I know this is hard if not impossible - but the sooner you focus on other, more important things, the sooner it fades into the background. In the end, it won't make you crazy and your life will be just as normal as you want it to be. Stay positive, that's the cure. At least, that's my story.

 

Thank you for this, I needed it. Just got a high pitch noise starting today in my left ear and very scared. Can't sleep either. This has calmed me down a bit.

 

@Dennis B. Thank you for sharing. I think all of us sincerely pray to be at peace with our tinnitus one day. I've been given a singular consist high pitch tone myself. As a newbie (2 months) I feel absolutely mortified by the idea of this being my reality. It's hard to imagine how people have sustained over 20 years with this condition. What frightens me most is my compulsive nature to check in with tinnitus. "Just making sure you are still there little buddy"... ugh. My biggest hurdle besides sleep I think will be the task of not monitoring the beast.

 

Thank you for this great post, I have read it with great care, and hope to achieve something similar one day

I can see you are new here on Tinnitus Talk, but it is always much appreciated when fellow sufferers (or experiencers, as some prefers) join to give us some positive stories.

 

@Dennis B.

This post was amazing! Well done you for being so positive and coming here and telling others who are currently worried or in fight or flight mode that with a good mental attitude we can start living again rather than surviving day-by-day. Obviously I know from my own experience, it's easier said than done. But a positive attitude really can help tremendously.

Kind Regards

Steph

 

Thank you for sharing your story. It is amazing.

twa

 

Can I ask what you did to manage any anxiety/irritability around hearing intrusive tinnitus?

 

This post will give lot of hope to many people including me.

Thank you for writing a detailed post.

 

This just teaches me to protect yourself. That and not give up as to what's going on as maybe you can arrest it.

Ear issues? Keep steroids and antivirals around just in case you wake up deaf.