Poll: Was Your Tinnitus Onset Sudden or Gradual?

I got my tinnitus and hyperacusis suddenly after a concert, and I never had experienced tinnitus before in my life.

I am wondering how everyone else got theirs, and if it came on suddenly or gradually.

 

I was at work at my office and it was end of the day and I heard a loud sound and at first when I went home i thought it would go away, but deep down I knew it was here to stay, and it was. I've have learned to cope.

 

I was using a speaker phone on a conference call. I couldn't hear anything, so I thought it wasn't on speaker phone any more. I put the phone to my left ear and at that moment, feedback blasted into my ear. Tinnitus started immediately and has never stopped.

 

Gradual. Loud sound from my headphones lead to fullness and a weird feeling in my ears. A week or slightly less later I started to notice my tinnitus.

Though, I suspected for a long time that I had tinnitus already but that it was just so quiet that I couldn't hear it unless I was in complete silence. And I mean complete silence, like no electronics running at home.

 

I just woke up one day with intrusive T.
Went to the doctor who pointed out that I had severe wax buildup.

Removed the wax, but T hasn’t stopped.
This was a year ago.

I also have moderate hearing loss to high frequencies probably due to prolonged sound deprivation

 

My T is a "fleeting T" that just never went away. I still haven't figured out why it decided to stay at that particular day, as I have had experiences of fleeting T my entire life. But I suppose it's some kind of gradual noise damage that caught up with me in the end.

 

Of course it's normal to have fleeting T. I had it all the time pre-T. After getting T I started observing when I would get fleeting and it has always been after loud and unexpected noise.

 

The high percentage of sudden onset surprises me.

 

Mine was both gradual and sudden. How? Tinnitus increased in iover the years as I continually habituated. Then a loud blast suddenly increased the decibel level of my T, elevated the hiss, added a high pitched tone to my left ear and a reverb effect. All previous habituation was cancelled out. Took four to five years to "see the light at the end of the tunnel".

Habituation is no longer how long can I go without noticing T, but how well can I cope day by day. I'm working at lengthening the time I'm able ignore T, which is very short right now. But has started to improve since the five year mark.

 

Hardly anyone pays attention to this actually very important question.
What does textbook knowledge actually say?
In an acute acoustic trauma, it should be known whether the tinnitus begins immediately, after hours, the next morning or only after a few days, or even later.
I haven't found anything about it in the literature.

 

It was very sudden for me. One minute I didn't have it, the next minute I got it. It was accompanied by pain too.

 

Sounds a little unlikely if olanzapine is the cause. But the ways of tinnitus are often strange....

 

Well, the tinnitus appeared when I started the drug and subsided after I stopped the drug. So I can't imagine it being caused by anything else. Maybe it was indirectly caused by it.

The explanation my otoneurologist gave me is that Olanzapine has respiratory tract infections as a side effect, and my diagnose is ETD. Since no other doctor bothered to listen to my symptoms concerning this, I'm going with that explanation.

 

I was suffering from kidney stones, and had a catheter pigstail tail inside me for about 3 months. Had extreme stress from one day to the other, and suddenly after the first month at 5 in the morning I suddenly got tinnitus.

 

Well, I was making music the whole day so I did not notice. When I went to sleep I noticed my ears felt strange but next day I noticed they were ringing...

 

I had went to visit my mother. Was driving back from her house to my house. About an hour or so into the trip I suddenly had it start in my left ear. It grew in intensity severely over the next two days then became bilateral. Eventually I also noticed at times I have head buzzing like in the rear center of my head. So it’s in three locations. Types of sounds and severity have varied since. Also hyperacusis set in at some time shortly afterward. I don’t remember exactly when.