My Road Towards Success

First off, I am in no way cured of my tinnitus, and I am currently not habituated to it, but I have recently found an inner strength I did not know I had. I believe, that this strength will help me to habituate in time

This is my story...

I was born with a inherited hearing loss, often known as a "cookie-bite" hearing loss due to the shape of the audiogram. The affected area is typically located to the midle tones between 500Hz - 4000Hz.
Both my great grandfather, my father and his 4 brothers all have this condition and are all wearing hearing aids. But, I am the only one suffering from T and mild H at this point. I know that my initial T started when I was 16 and exposed to a firecracker just 1.5 feet from my right ear. From that day, my right ear never felt comfortable and a high pitch with a hiss developed in both ears. I coped rather fine the following years, but I made some serious bad choices when it came to protect my ears in loud environments. I attended clubs regularly, became a DJ, went to a load of parties and I loved music and cultural happenings. I remember after a rave back in 1998 that I had tough periode for about 4 days with very intrusive T and my hearing was really bad.
But, after some time, things apparently got better since I started attending clubs, concerts etc. again.
I am 100% sure that my way of life caused me the pain I am suffering today, but at the same time gave me some of my most precious memories I have in life that I would not be without.

In 2008, when I was 28 years old, my hearing was getting to a point were I could not ignore it anymore and I booked an appointment with an ENT. I knew that the day I would have to rely on hearing aids would come some way down the road, but mentally I hated the thought of it. I have all my life been a outgoing person that loved attending cultural happenings and parties. I quickly found that my hearing aids would cause me trouble in living my life the way that I had been living it. And within 3 years I became 100% dependent on the hearing aids to be able to function. My T however did not cause me any big deal at this point, all though I did think about it from time to time when it was loud and intrusive.

In 2013 I experienced what I hoped was a temporary spike in my T. Sadly, this was a new and permanent tone, and I remember I had some trouble accepting that this would be something I had to live with. But, slowly and steady I got more and more used to it as time passed until I had habituated about 90% in the spring of 2017.

Then, in the early summer of 2017 I started to get yet another tone.. This was a completely different type of tone and appeared only in my right ear (the most damaged one) and had a very, VERY fluctuating style. At the same time, I experienced tremendous anxiety due to being burned-out from a very stressful year. The summer went and I then suffered from severe vertigo attacks due to BPPV and I fell into depression and became isolated in my own home. Having 4 children in the age 2 - 11 this also affected my family life in ways I had a hard time coping with. I immediately started to investigate on how I could get better as fast as possible, in order to be the man I once were before all of this struck me like a lightening from clear sky.

It is now almost December, 5 months since it all started, and I am happy to say that I am making slowly progress in getting back to my life. My BPPV is much better, and I am able to attend to daily life again. My T however is still very bad and makes things very difficult at times, and I more then I want, have dark and negative thoughts about the future and how life will be. I am only 37 years old, and I would like to make the best of it in the years to come. I am one of those that can live pretty good as long as there is hope, and one of my biggest hopes is that there eventually will be a cure or at least a relief for my T.
But until that day comes, I will be doing my very best to live happy with these conditions I have, because this was the life I was given. Keeping a positive mindset is hard, and sometimes not possible at all, but that is also OK, and these feelings should be allowed to surface from time to time. I will be trying some of the treatments related to the mindset, like meditation, yoga, craniosacral therapy etc. because I believe that the answer to a happy life lies within our minds.

I have just started my road to success, and I will be walking this road as long as it takes to achieve it. Walking it with some of you from this forum will make it more easy, and I hope we can benefit from each others experiences in the time to come.

I wish you all the best, together we are strong!

 

Yes, I really do believe that @Hazel .. Hopefully I will get there sooner than later.