Noticed Tinnitus for About Two Weeks

[Duncan]

Hi everyone.

I'm a forty year old male, noticed a ringing in my ears about two weeks ago. The issue is mainly while I am sleeping or when it's very quiet. The rest of the time I either barely hear it or I'm not sure if I'm hearing it at all. What's odd is that I can always remember being able to 'tune in' a ringing in my ears when it was quiet and I always thought this was kind of normal. If often wondered if I would be able to tune it out again if I didn't stop thinking about it, but my thoughts always turned to other things and eventually I forgot all about it. If someone had asked me three weeks ago if I knew what Tinnitus was I would have thought tennis elbow.

Unfortunately I can't seem to tune this ringing out anymore, particularly at night. The situation came to a head last week when I went for a hot tub and when I came out one of my ears had become blocked with water. I am prone to wax buildup and my ears being blocked just confirmed for me that the wax may be the direct cause or at least aggravating the ringing.

Sure enough I went to the walk-in clinic and got my ears flushed out. I would say that the problem was 95% gone, and I was hopefully that once whatever irritation the wax had caused went away so would the ringing. Unfortunately, when it's quiet or when I'm trying to sleep I am still noticing this high pitch whine, mainly in my left ear. I have seen my GP who has sent me to and ENT. He told me that he himself had Tinnitus and that he no longer noticed it 99.9% of the time which I found very encouraging.

By this point I had already read a lot of scary things about Tinnitus, but also some great stories of people learning to cope with the ringing, so I was hopeful that given time my thoughts would turn to other things (and I still am). I'm also not ready to give up on the idea that the wax buildup irritated my ear drums and that in time the irritation will subside and so will the ringing.

From what I've read I think I'm on the right track. I have ignored my ears for a long time, my hearing has never been great and I tend to miss vast amounts of conversation with just a little background noise, so I going to see what the ENT says. Other than that I'm going to do my best to try and ignore it. I'm over most of the initial anxiety, but I still worry occasionally that there could be something more serious going on under the hood.

Anyways, that's my story, wish we could have met under different circumstances.

 

[glynis]

Welcome to Tinnitus Talk Duncan.
Fingers crossed your tinnitus will settle down for you and maybe you have hearing loss that will get picked up when go ENT.
Keep your positive attitude going as it does help keeping your mood up with tinnitus.....lots of love glynis

 

[Michael Leigh]

@Duncan
Hi Duncan,
You might want to consider using a sound machine by your bedside at night or playing low level non intrusive music such as classical to help you drift off to sleep. It is not recommended that anyone having tinnitus to sleep in a quiet room. Please read my post below: Sound machines. If you listen to music through headphones, my advice is to refrain from doing so even at low level.

Michael

Sound Machines

Sound Oasis, makes the best sound machines in my opinion and they are specifically designed for people with tinnitus although anyone will benefit using one. The quality of their digital sounds will be far superior to any homemade sounds that you compile if your intention is to use them for sound enrichment.

A sound machine can be used night and day but do their magic best when we are in deep sleep. It supplies the brain and auditory system with sound enrichment. Over time, the tinnitus is pushed further into the background making it less intrusive during our waking hours and will make the path to habituation easier.

The purpose of using a sound machine at night is to have it playing without drawing attention to itself unlike a radio or listening to music will can draw the Brain's attention and delay habituation.

It takes a while to get used to sound enrichment at night so stay with it.

Michael

PS: Many people have contacted me after they have habituated to their tinnitus and stopped using sound enrichment at night, only to find their tinnitus becoming intrusive again. The rule of thumb: avoid quiet rooms and surroundings especially at night by using a sound machine.

 

[Duncan]

Thanks for the warm welcome, I've got to say that the existence of this board helped me immeasurably, particularly during the roughest patches, when I was questioning everything, even my own sanity.

It's been over a month, I've been to my GP and ENT who didn't find anything immediately, however I'm still waiting on bloodwork to come back and will be getting an MRI. I have my doubts that there's anything physically wrong with me, like I said earlier I think it's possible that I've had T for quite some time and I've just recently started 'tuning it in.'

I know that sound machines and background noises were recommended, but I found that trying to drown out the sound just made me focus even more on the times when I couldn't avoid the silence. Instead I've just tried to focus on the fact that I know the sound isn't going to hurt me. It's impossible for me to 'think my way' out of the ringing, unfortunately once I've thought about it there isn't much I can do to stop the ringing, but over the past month I have had long periods when the ringing didn't even occur to me. Once of my biggest fears was that I wouldn't be able to enjoy my life of fully function unless this sound was erraticated completely. This fear has proven to be unfounded and I've come to realize that it's not necessary to completely remove the sound. If I have to live with this sound or it gets erraticated completely really isn't relevant, I'm going to just deal with it either way.

To the members of the forum just starting to struggle through this I'm sure you're probably going through some of the same things I went through. You probably want this to be over immediately and may view being completely 'cured' of this being the only acceptable solution, but you're going to get through this no matter what.

Best of luck to all, feel better soon.