Random Thoughts of Hope

I am a 10 year survivor of Kidney Cancer and Tinnitus. I have learned a lot. Tinnitus is nerve damage in the middle ear specifically in the organ of corti...the hair like cilia that transform sound wave frequencies into a signal that your brain can recognize. When the cilia are damaged, you are more susceptible to tinnitus.

If you have renal deficiency, you are many times more likely to have further damage which will result in tinnitus if an ototoxic agent like anesthesia or intravenous antibiotics are introduced into the situation because the kidneys are responsible for cleaning these toxins from your blood. Spinal anesthesia is more likely to harm you than general anesthesia.

Noise induced tinnitus is much milder than toxic agent induced tinnitus. The best way to manage it from my experience is to mask and ignore it as best you can with the sound of water and traffic and anything that has a complex audio signature that is in the range of your frequencies. The ringing you hear is your brain creating a tone or tones at the frequencies your ears are missing due to damage. Remember that we hear in 3 dimensions which is partially why tinnitus is so difficult to treat. Our brains process sound in a 3 dimensional profile due to evolution and our need to protect ourselves from threats out of our peripheral vision.

Audio retraining attempts to fool the brain into perceiving the ringing at a lower volume by flooding you with signals which are directly adjacent to the ones your brain is creating. That is why there is still hope for a cure. Even brain surgery with micro-laser ablation similar to what removes tremors from Parkinson's patients is being considered and is on the horizon. The surgeon would remove the portion of your skull near the known hearing center and apply an electric current to see if it has an effect. They would do this while you are awake and is basically painless. Just no anesthesia please! Ha Ha.

When someone tells you you are just over-reacting to your tinnitus, imagine that you are about to kick them in the groin to see if they over-react. Everyone's tinnitus is different so don't get lumped into that catch all mentality. Knowledge is power and I find it helps me deal with mine. I fight and give in and fight some more.

I am going to start surfing again and I am stronger today than I was yesterday. I am going to find more and more reasons to get up in the morning and hope i find a woman who can tolerate me and my crazy affliction...which I should probably keep to myself for the first few months after I meet someone right? Quiet rooms and situations really aggravate it so she will probably start to wonder why I like to eat dinner with headphones on!

 

You just need to find yourself a chatty little gal. Then you won't have to worry about quiet rooms and situations. She'll also help keep you distracted from your T...

There's no need to thank me for this totally useless suggestion....