My Audible Experience

Growing up with Hyperacusis had some advantages, I always won at seeking. And some disadvantages, I could hear ultrasound, often painfully.

While standing about a foot from loudspeaker in a Radio Shack when a customer cranked the volume on an amplifier up as high as it would go, I was assaulted by a roaring in my ears. The sound was so loud that I could not understand a person standing inches away from me. I had to read their lips.

My mood crashed so I went to a doctor, an audiologist who prescribed Niacin. Niacin is now known to be dangerous and is not recommended. However, after experiencing the excruciating pain of Niacin-induced flushing, the roaring in my ears decreased to a whistle of multiple frequencies.

That happened 40 years ago. The whistles are still there, sometimes loud, sometimes not, sometimes changing frequency or pulsating or clicking, sometimes completely gone for a blink.

I learned to simply accept the noise and explain my deafness to others.

Now that I'm naturally loosing my hearing, the whistles and clicking is starting to dominate what I hear.

 

Hello HKT.

About the best advice anyone can give you is just to try to accept it and do your best to carry on with the issues you have. I am completely deaf in both ears, with the worst Tinnitus you can imagine. So try to think about that one for a second or two. I cannot hear a thing but theses steam whistles 24/7/365. Always there, never shut down. Makes it hard to get to sleep, stay asleep, cope day to day etc etc, however we have to push on. There is only one alternative, deal with it or let it kill you. I saw many specialists, had tons of tests, tried various medications for Tinnitus as well as stress and sleeping, and all in all, nothing makes it better. Can really only make things worse if not careful. I use the odd medication very rarely to calm down but only on bad bad days. I cannot communicate with anyone normally. They all must write things down so this has been hard. I stay away from others at every chance so as not to bother them with my deafness. Tinnitus used to drive me totally insane. Now after 4 years of constant high pitch noise in both ears, I just adapt and accept. It may come a day there will be an actual treatment that works for most, however I don't see that in my lifetime. Very little funding and studies have been put forth on this issue and at this pace it will take a real lucky breakthrough to find some real help.

So hang in there, discuss this with your doctor or GP, be careful what medications he/she may prescribe as most can be habit forming. Remember this, you are not alone in this.

Keep well my friend and keep trucking!!

Mike