I Was Habituated — Nine Years Later, Tinnitus, Hyperacusis, Headaches and Ear Pain Are Back

Nah mate, you definitely don't want to call the ambulance. Ambulances are noisy as f*ck.

No, calling the ambulance is the last thing you want to do; that's only going to make things worse.

Trust.

 

I agree. Also in the ER they cannot do anything except give me neuroleptic drugs. I have plenty of those at home.

 

How are you now, @aura? I hope you're still doing ok.

 

She’s totally drugged up and waiting for a colonoscopy by Dr. Exit!

Her ears are ringing loud but under the circumstances she couldn’t care less

 

Hey, @aot!

Well... I have been better last week, but as the days keep passing, that " eeeeee" becomes louder and louder...

I'm starting to be scared again, but it's not like I didn't see it coming.
This is our reality now and we have to do our best to keep it together.

The good part is that I'm still able to sleep without drugs, although it's harder everyday.

Even though I wake up early in the morning and my days are very busy, I don't feel like going to bed in the night.


As long as i manage to sleep at least 6 hours a night, I can handle my hyperacusis and tinnitus. After 2 sleepless nights, I'm basically insane and not able to tolerate anything.

How are you doing?

 

It's something between a mosquito and a fly in my right ear these days.

The alien insect is on vacation I guess...

 

Let’s hope it settles at mosquito then?

How’s the foot going?

 

The foot is better. I can slowly walk by myself.

The tinnitus is already worse. I can hear it again over the TV, over other people talking... long night ahead.

 

I'm awfully sorry to hear about your struggles @aura.

If you don't mind me asking; do you hear your tinnitus faintly or clearly over the above given environments? What's the frequencies? Low volume high frequency tinnitus seem to cut through everything, as I can hear mine outside.

I hope things turn around, for both of us.

Wish you well,
Stacken

 

@aura, my tinnitus is also like this, I hear it over the TV (although I don't listen to the TV at a loud volume), but while driving I also hear it if the radio is off.

This mosquito and fly sound are high frequency, right? I think that may be why there is little masking it.

At the beginning my tinnitus was like this and then it was low, but now it has increased again.

Are you taking any antidepressant to help anxiety?

By the way, seeing that you're a doctor, and knowing that an antidepressant can cause tinnitus, did you prescribe or take any?

 

I hear it pretty clear. The frequency is something in between high and low.

But I also have short bursts of high frequency, dentist drill tinnitus. Sometimes it is so high pitched that I almost can't hear it, but feel it like something sharp in my ears/head.

The problem is that I also hear it in my brain, kinda hard to explain. It's almost like I can't "unhear it" no matter how much I try to mask it. It has a rhythm that sticks to my brain.

It's intermittent, like a morse code (but slower) and strange enough I don't hear it louder if I plug my ears. It's like the external sounds somehow make it worse and to stick out more!

I'm sorry, I can't really find my words to describe it, I'm pretty anxious now and it's past my bedtime.

Not sleeping will only make it worse.

I did fall asleep earlier and it woke me up...

 

How loud are your tones? What the heck do you do for sleep lol?

 

@aura, how is your tinnitus these days?

The psychologist Tony Humphreys has a theory that tinnitus is often a sort of warning sign to the self to pay more attention to self care and self nurturing. We can so easily become caught up in the world of the external that we forget to meet our own real and deeper needs. So sometimes tinnitus can be a symptom of self neglect. Perhaps the way forward is to spend more time listening to our real needs. We can do this by treating ourselves objectively, as we would a small child, doing what is best for it.

Hope these thoughts help.

 

That do sounds like some pretty loud tinnitus. I'm very sorry to hear that and hope it recedes a bit.

Tones in my left ear are incredibly close, they're the loudest. The character of the tones in my right ear is like an angle grinder running in a sheet of metal, which is kinda obnoxious, but it's lower in volume than the left. The highest frequencies can be heard outside, but it's pretty common for very high frequencies, despite them not being all that loud. When trying to sleep at night, it can be a bit intrusive, but because I've used hearing protection 24/7 it's pretty much the only thing I've listened to for 7 months straight - call me "a little habituated" if you like. Sometimes it's hard to sleep, but most days I can do it without masking or medication. Sometimes I take medication to make it just a bit easier, like Melatonin and Hydroxyzine, but I use them very scarcely because I'm very afraid of side effects.

All the best to both of you,
Stacken

 

I have a lot of sounds.

Bilateral hissing, from time to time bilateral morse code tinnitus and fleeting tinnitus, and in my right ear the most annoying sounds: a strange high pitched insect sound (it sounds and feels like it's eating my inner ear), a somehow low frequency buzz (this was the first tone and the least annoying one), short episodes of extremely, sharping high pitched sound and the last but not least an "eeee" sound that is either continuous or intermittent, like a morse code but at a slower pace. At its loudest point I can hear it during daytime, watching tv, etc and it can wake me up from my sleep.

I am not taking antidepressants for the moment but I think that if you are very depressive/anxious something has to be done (and by that I mean taking drugs if needed).

 

The fact that you don't know the cause of your tinnitus makes it harder to prevent it from getting worse or gaining new tones.

Perhaps anxiety played a role in the emergence of your tinnitus?

Doctors think I should take an antidepressant to better deal with tinnitus. Even I think I should try it.

But due to everything I have read, the huge number of cases of people who worsened their situation with antidepressants do not give me the courage to go buy it. I think that by having read these things, if I took an antidepressant, I would "think" it would get worse.

 

Thanks… that sounds like a hell of a time lol, geeze.

 

Yeah man, it really is, but we have no other choice than to accept and deal with this brain ass tomfoolery.

 

Agreed. We move forward and try to be positive as best we can.

 

And that’s why we’re here 24/7 talking to strangers...?

Even @Wrfortiscue with job, kid AND a demanding wife

 

Thank god the rest of you don't have lives, otherwise I'd think I was doing this tinnitus thing wrong. （’へ ’）

 

Sorry for the late response, @aura. Life and work and stuff. You know how it is. I'm doing well. Protecting more than usual. I'm hoping to get my hyperacusis back down to semi-normal levels by Januray at least.

I'm glad you're not as bad as you were before, and I'm sorry that you're still not better.

Try to get as much sleep as possible, and try to focus on all the good you have in your life.

I wish I could help you more.

 

Hello!

So 've had this intermitent "eeee" sound in my right ear for a long time (at least 6 months).

But this morning, for the first time, it moved to the other ear, the "good one".

It's not a new tone, it's exactly the same sound I've been hearing all this months in my right ear.

Did this happen to anyone else?
What could it mean?

Thank you!

 

Morning aura. Yes it’s common. For me especially after sleeping.
It goes back usually...

 

Did it switch back...?

Did you do something with a tooth?

 

Yeah, back where it belongs, in my right ear!

 

Lovely

 

The last days were somehow better.

Tinnitus wasn't that loud and I managed to sleep 6 hours every night.

It's good to know that after a very hard period I'm feeling better now.

I could get used to this...

 

And just when I was saying that i was better... a few minutes after waking up this morning, the loud " eeeeee" strikes again...

High pitched sounds, that alien insect, sensibility to sounds and loud hissing all day long.

I have no idea what caused this.
Maybe the junk, salty food and the sweets that I ate last night...

It's so hard to find what's causing these spikes. Maybe they are just random and the most predictable thing about them is that they're totally unpredictable.

 

Hello Aura,

I see from your medical report you had cesarean section in 2014. You mentioned formerly you first tinnitus disappeared after about 1-2 years.

May I ask you if this happened when you become pregnant?

The reason why I am asking this is because, after looking at and discarding many possible causes, I got to the point I think my tinnitus and many others of unknown cause are of autoimmune origin, Th1/Th2 imbalance. In my family both my father and daughter have autoimmune diseases of Th1 dominance. Pregnancy shift immune balance toward Th2.
So maybe we could get rid of tinnitus by having another baby!