One Year and One Month: Okay with Tinnitus

Hey Ya'll,

As the title suggests, this is not a full blown success story in that the tinnitus went away, but I want to report that I am currently living with it pretty well.

I first got tinnitus back in March of last year, and while it has predominantly been a high pitched ring in my right ear, I occasionally get a 15 sec ring in my left. A migraine also strangely gave me a month long ring in the left ear that would only "activate" if I was near a fan or in the shower.

A thread already exists going over my first trauma in March and second one in May, but to be brief, they were both rock concerts. One where I had no protection, and one where I thought I had protected myself enough to be okay. I discovered this site after the second trauma and learned fast that you don't do loud concerts again once you have tinnitus. Period.

The second trauma took my normally 2-3 tinnitus up to a 4-6. Astonishingly, even though I didn't end up taking prednisone until 2 weeks after the second trauma, it really worked on getting me back to a 2-3, but I had to stop after 5 days due to serious side effects. However, the effect remained until August.

So What Has Worked?

I noticed on the Turmeric thread on this site that people who responded well to Prednisone responded to Turmeric. I took it for about 3 weeks and I feel like it definitely had an easing effect on the noise. I stopped taking it because it does make your hair fall out and I do love my beard, lol.

I also decided to turn my fan off at night 5 months ago. Instead of using noise to distract my brain from the ring so it could sleep, I just accepted that it's there and that it's okay for it to be a sort of "ambient soundtrack" to my life. This is not to say that anyone can do this, as I know I don't have the worst possible version of this affliction. But if you fall into the mild, or even intermediate levels of intrusiveness, I believe it can work.

Piggybacking off of the last point, I trained myself to react differently when I would notice my tinnitus. I would just go "oh yeah, it's there," and go back to what I was doing. Keeping busy has helped me notice it much less through out the day, and reacting differently to get it off my mind more quickly. I picked this tip up from somewhere on this site, but I must admit I forget the thread name.

Another thing that was HUGE was I stopped "checking in" on it and saying it's a 3 or a 5 or whatever in the moment. Assigning it a number made me want to keep a score on it through out the day which wasn't helpful. This was another tip I learned from this site.

And lastly, I'll say that keeping my stress in check helps. The more stressed I am about life in general the more intrusive the tinnitus seems to be.

Final Thoughts

While I am living well with my tinnitus, there are a couple things I will miss. Going to concerts and large sporting events is a no-go until I get my hands on a device/pill/treatment that either gets rid of or reduces the tinnitus that I have. But, if I had to live for the rest of my life with my tinnitus as it is now, I could do it.

If you read all that thanks. I hope it gave someone encouragement or hope.

And I just want to thank everyone for making Tinnitus Talk such a supportive community for tinnitus sufferers. I can't imagine that just over a decade ago Tinnitus Talk didn't exist yet. For the sake of everyone with this condition, especially those who are worse off than me, hopefully one of the many treatments being worked on helps us out.

Take care,
Bob