Scared — Husband's Tinnitus

I'm here asking for some serious advice. I'm getting more and more worried as each day goes by and I have no-one to ask, so I've turned to this forum in the hope someone can give me some positive help.

Just over a year ago, we came back from a holiday abroad and my husband noticed that he couldn't shake off a high pitched tone in both ears which seemed to have developed after getting off the plane. A couple of months later he still had it so went to the doctors who found nothing obvious. He has Private Health cover through his work, so he kicked that into action.

Anyway after hearing tests, all resulting with no hearing loss being shown except for a 10% age related dip around 6K, an MRI, much prodding and poking, confirmation came back that he had tinnitus, so go away for six months and try to live with it. Habituation will happen.

Well as you can imagine, it didn't and I've watched my husband start to go downhill. He says it's there 24hrs and he's aware of it 100% of the time. It repeats the same thing every single day.

He wakes up with a level 4 or 5 out of 10. He describes it as 5 is treading water with this mouth above the water line. Any higher than a 5 and he's starting to drown.

He stays at a 4 or 5 most of the morning but from about 3pm it starts to rise to a 6.

By early evening he's either a 7, 8 or 9. If he ever got to a 10 he says he will commit suicide.

Fortunately, he's never got to a 10 as somehow miraculously, he always falls to sleep of around 10.30. He does have a problem staying asleep but nightly amitriptyline helps this.

During the next few months we went to our local hearing centre to try a generic hearing aid with a tinnitus masker. That didn't help at all. He only used them for a couple of weeks but could tell they were not helping.

He then went back to the doctor saying is mood is low, daily headaches, crying most evenings but I'm getting more and more worried about how close is he to becoming suicidal. He says it feels like being on a cliff top in thick fog and doesn't know where the edge is.

He may be safe and the cliff edge a 100 feet away, but then again it could also be only 1 step away. That's the scary bit. Would one more thing force him to take the final step ?

The doctor prescribed 40mg fluoxetine each morning and 20mg amitriptyline at night to help him stay asleep.

He's now also paid privately with a tinnitus clinic and wears specially tuned "noisers" hearing aids about 8 hours every day from 1pm to 9pm.

We know his tinnitus is reactive to noise. He's been a computer service engineer for over 30 years and drives long distances to various data centres, (noisy) or offices.

Since they were introduced a few years ago he's always worn Hearing Plugs or Ear Defenders but they have no effect as the same daily pattern always repeats.

He comes home from work and then can't wait for sleep which obviously then gives him some relief. This is no way to live a life.

The worrying part for me is that over the last couple of months the levels 7, 8 or 9 are becoming earlier in the evening and now seems to bother him from late afternoon.

I'm worried that as each day goes by, his job is making him worse and if he continues, within a couple of years he'll be on a high level as soon as he wakes.

I know he has PHI income protection through his work which pays about 75% of his gross income until either he gets better or retires. He's 53 now so has 14 years left.

I've asked him if he can think about using this but he thinks this will only pay out if the illness stops him from working and not just because its making him ill.

He says its like if you lost both arms and couldn't drive a car they would pay up.

But if you get severar tinnitus because you are working they would not. He also says working passes the time, but I can see it's making him worse.

Does anyone know if these company PHI income protection schemes do pay out if work is causing the tinnitus but just as important, how can I prove it?

I'm watching my husband spiral and I want to know if anybody has actually been able to use anything like this.

 

I asked a T expert (a doctor) whether T can be used in a disability claim (in the US), and he said it was very difficult because it's invisible and "cannot be proved" (anyone could claim they are disabled because they have T, even when they don't). What he told me is that some people get disability through the depression part of T, as depression can be clinically evaluated.

This is one more unfortunate thing about T's invisibility: don't expect sympathy from the rest of the world (they don't know you suffer), and don't expect to easily claim disability.

As for your husband, we in here understand quite well what he is going through.

What types of therapies has he tried so far? (aside from the hearing aid + maskers)

BTW I'm not sure that the plane incident is due to the jet engine. It could also be barotrauma, or something completely unrelated.

Good luck.

 

I am from Canada. Some Canadian members seem to have a way to claim disability with intrusive tinnitus. But different countries may differ.

But I think it may help if you invite your husband here to interact with the members here. There are members here who can understand his suffering as many have intrusive tinnitus just like him. A big part of tinnitus suffering is mental. So if he can ease some mental burden by chatting out his feelings and with the support from others. it will help release some mounting stress and anxiety from him, which then can hopefully help his T to stay at a tolerable level. He can also read up the success stories here to give himself some hope for the future.

I have ultra high pitch loud dog whistle T and then severe hyperacusis a few years back. With prior condition of anxiety/panic disorder plus PTSD due to a family tragedy, my nerves were too weakened to take on T & H all a sudden, and I was in a mess mentally and physically with relentless anxiety and panic attack daily from the minute waken up by the loud screaming T, a T with so high pitch that I could hear it above the jet noise in the last few flights and above the raging rapids of the wild salmon rivers that I fish. I was bombarded with dark thoughts of course when the sufferings were so intense. I never thought I could recover and have a good life again. But today I live a normal, happy, productive, and absolutely enjoyable life. I wrote my success story to share some helpful strategies. So if your husband has time, come here and read the success stories and I provide the link below of some samples. Good luck and God bless you and your husband.

my story "from darkness to light...":
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...w-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

The most read success story with a simple but effective method:
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/back-to-silence.7172/

Jade the lady truck driver whose T is louder than a 800-ton mining truck :
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/6-months-tinnitus-still-going-strong-but-so-am-i.3226/

 

I'm sorry for your situation. I have very severe tinnitus myself.

 

I will be pointing him in this direction. It's such a debilitating condition to have and hard for many to understand as by simply looking at someone, who would know? As I said, start a holiday, first week not so good, second week, although the tinnitus is there, the noisier level starts later in the day. Maybe being signed off from work for a longer period would prove or show that things would improve as we know his is so reactive to noise (data centres etc)
Thank you for replying anyway. Would be good to know if we could ever actually use this PHI

 

Just to add, my husband never has a good day, every day is bad and has been since the start. He has said himself he doesn't believe it was the plane which caused it, but it was about that time, it broke through.
I think he believes it's his work environment that has brought all this up, he's constantly in data centres, where the noise of all these servers is often above 85db as he has to work right in with the servers, replacing components. He says he's now complaining he can hear his tinnitus later in the day whilst in these rooms.
He thinks his only hope is to give up work and see if he can claim on his work's income protection. In case anyone is wondering, we live in the UK.
He's holding back on CBT while he gives the "noisers" a year and as he's particularly stubborn, he doesn't believe CBT would help fix the issue of the noise in these rooms, raising his levels. He gets cross when it's suggested.
Also he's not a forum person, this is why I'm here...his work has always been IT, therefore he'd rather have nothing to do Facebook, social media etc. He's adamant it's not stress just angry with himself as it is definitely noise related.
Getting himself out of that environment seems to stabilise it.

 

I hope he continues to wear hearing protection during his work day. 85db all day is loud enough for noise to become his mortal enemy!

 

I'm 21 and diagnosed with mild to severe hereditary hearing loss on certain higher frequencies. I basically baffled my audiologist. My T fortunately is not too intrusive and can be masked by a fan and moderate traffic. I can even bear to sit in complete silence these days. So if you're husband's hearing is mostly normal with 10% loss due to age, the intensity of his T might be instigated by his brain and anxiety.
Here's a really great TED Talk by Josef Rauschecker, a neuroscientist who talks about how tinnitus is connected to brain functions or rather dysfunctions.

Tinnitus: Ringing in the Brain | Josef...

There are also many articles written by researchers connecting tinnitus with the brain and it makes sense because both the brain and the ears play roles in hearing.

I remember the first few weeks of my initial onset - I was a complete wreck. I'm still unhappy about it, but my parents said I used to look like I was two steps away from a psych ward. Sounds were painful and I was so afraid. I was able to hear it over a lot of things. These days my T is much less intrusive and I no longer have hyperacusis. I have faith that my brain filters would eventually right themselves. The biggest improvement was my change in attitude - I resolved to feel like myself again. To stop measuring the broken whistles and instead measure my response to it.

So don't lose hope. Your husband can still live a normal and successful life. There are many people in this forum, especially in Success Stories who have experienced similar things and managed to feel better and healthy, with or without T. If there is one thing I've learnt about dealing with tinnitus, it's that habituation/healing/recovery only happens when you choose to live life.

 

Your story is heart breaking. Nobody deserves to get Tinnitus, it is a horrible thing to live with, and your story tells the side of a spouse watching T slowly rob a loved on of his happiness. I have had T 2 times in my life, both noise induced. The first time (13 years ago) the T totally faded within 2 years. I am currently 11 months into a second bout with T, and thankfully it has faded about 80% and continues to improve.
I have never heard of air travel causing permanent T, but I have heard of it causing temporary issues. I think there is a good probability that his T will improve over time, possibly fading to where he never notices it anymore. I just can't imagine that air travel is loud enough to cause T, and the pressure change shouldn't cause anything permanent either. I'm 57, so even in our 50's we can still heal our ears.
Does he have fullness/pressure in his ears? (possible Eustachian tube plugged)

 

@digit ,
My husband could have posted a very similar story a couple of years ago. He put all of his hobbies on hold for a year because he was afraid to leave me at home by myself. He eventually pushed me to seek help from a psychologist. I did not want to go but I am glad that I did go. I had not discovered this forum yet, and that doctor became the second person in my life to actually comprehend what I was going through. It's tough when you have a serious but invisible illness and the world just expects you to continue on like normal. Even audiologists and ENT doctors did not seem to grasp how difficult things were for me. It's tough for you because you are probably the only one who sees the breakdowns, the crying, the exhaustion, etc. I did not cry or open up to coworkers or friends. I hope you can find support here and if you are unable to persuade your husband to seek CBT, then maybe you should seek help for yourself. You are also carrying a very heavy burden right now. I hope things get better for both of you.

 

I feel for you and your husband. To be sure it's noise that makes things worse, try excluding noise as much as possible for a day or two keeping other things the same. My tinnitus was for a long time better in the morning and got worse during the day and evening but this was not because of noise during the day. Perhaps he could take a week off work to see if this helps him or not.
I agree with jjflyman, old ears can improve and if his ears feel plugged it could be a Eustachian tube problem. You say he has daily headaches so it could also be a TMJ problem. There are many things to try.

 

Welcome to Tinnitus Talk @digit.
Lovely to see you here finding help for your husband.
Tinnitus comes with lots of unwanted emotions and with lack of sleep and low mood on top of tinnitus life can be tough going and trying work and cope daily.
There is help and we are here to support you both around the clock.

Wearing white noise generators can help along with CBT or TRT to support people emotionally while adjusting to your sound.
Keeping relaxing music on to help him relax and stay calm and take his mind off the sound.
Going for walks is good also.
We know what you both are going through and totally understand just how depressed it can make you but there is help.
The Prozac will help and amitryptaline will help sleep.
Amirtyptaline and Nortryptaline are two antidepresant that can help tinnitus for some people.

Keep posting for support and hope you can come on together and make a few friends on here too !
Love glynis x

 

He should quit that job, high frequencies noise can make T worse. Usually in normal condition T should become less severe

 

I am an IT guy too for a long time, but I am mostly with software. If going on vacation can help your husband, then perhaps it is not just a noise exposure issue. Stress and anxiety are known to trigger or aggravate tinnitus. Try to find ways to de-stress the body such as travelling, hiking, leisure walk or jog, having some recreational activities etc. You can also try get some natural alternatives to calm and to have better sleep, such as Melatonin, Lemon Balm, Valerian, Hops, Catnips, Passion Flower, Chamomile, Lavender, Kava, etc. You can do google search or check Amazon.com for each of them to know how people review these products, and see if your husband can take them as a supplement. Check out this site on using natural herbs for helping to sleep or to calm the nerves.
http://www.christopherhobbs.com/lib...ealth/herbs-and-natural-remedies-for-insomnia

If keeping the job is important, perhaps use ear protection or use musician earplugs which will still allow the ears to hear sounds in normal range but will block out the extremes. CBT is a great technique for easing stress and anxiety. Dr. Hubbard on this forum (Doctor's Corner) has once written his success story which he credits CBT as helping him live again after suffering initially from his own tinnitus. You and/or your husband can read up on his success story with link below:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/how-cbt-helped-me-live-again-dr-hubbards-story.4608/

 

@digit I'm truly sorry that your husband is having such a hard time with his tinnitus, but I too encourage him to reach out and try this forum. I've met some extremely helpful people in my local area from this website and I've also found some very useful information as well. I wish the best for you and your family and I want you to know that you guys are in my thoughts and prayers.

 

Working around servers for years could be the cause. 85+db is believable and too loud. More than that, some servers can emit very high frequency sounds. Most people don't know this, but decibel meters don't really pick up anything past 10kHz.

I have a server right behind me in my office/control room and it drives me nutty. I end up having to wear earplugs all day which makes me focus on the ringing more.

 

Perhaps your husband ought to start wearing ear protection (ear plugs, Peltor muffs, or both) when he is around those servers. It is possible that those servers are the reason he hasn't gotten better...

 

Perhaps you could try noise cancelling headphones with some king of sound enrichment (or sound therapy).

 

I have noise isolating headphones, but I don't like using them for long periods of time.

The stupid server needs to be replaced, but that's another story.

 

Thanks all.
Some of these suggestions are worth looking at as obviously some work for people.

Just have to re-iterate, my husband is paying privately for Tinnitus retraining Therapy which is also where the "noises" come from. He has been using purple noise at night. This is all night whilst we sleep. Advised that purple noise was best for his tone of T.
His referral to hospital has said they can use CBT too.
I know from simply watching him, that he is so much better after he's been away from the work environment after a couple of weeks.
Thank you all for your comments, it's very much appreciated.

 

Sounds to me like his tinnitus is stress related. There's a guy on Reddit who has tinnitus caused by that. He says mirzapine really helps him, and often eliminates it completely. Definitely consider trying that for him.

 

What do you mean by that? Is his Tinnitus reacting to the TRT white noise?

 

No the "noisers" are like hearing aids. They wire you up and send various frequencies through a hearing set up which works out what to give you for relief.
https://thetinnitusclinic.co.uk/
He had paid for treatment (4 visits, a top level audiologist/specialist, telephone support, aids etc) which will continue for a year. After that time you can still pay for additional visits should you need it.
There are various treatments they could have chosen for him, this was the one they think will be best for him after testing and talking to him. He's due another visit in a couple of weeks.
Today is a good day. Just wish he had more of them......

 

I also work in a data center and have worked with data processing equipment since the days when we called them computer rooms, about 35 years. I also believe that cumulative exposure over the years, plus the high density of equipment these days have contributed to my tinnitus. I have been suicidal, habituated, suicidal and habituated again. In the beginning I was out for two months disability but found hearing aids helped with the hearing loss brought on by the noise or perhaps age related hearing loss and the white noise feature of the aids. February this year I had a spike that lasted until July and I thought I was finished but I had gotten careless with hearing protection but happy to say I am habituated again and have ear muffs that I use whenever I am near loud noise, I keep several pair around, at work, hanging on the lawn mower and in the car. It's very important to not over protect but equally important to protect when necessary. You will develop a sense of when to protect. Don't worry if you are exposed suddenly to a loud noise, the spikes that cause I have found are only temporary. Hang in better days will come. I know it may sound easy for people to say but those of us who have been there, desperate and considering the worst possible options are living proof that you can learn to live with it.
Since I've been wearing ear muffs in the data center vendors who come in for service often ask why. When I say I have tinnitus they usually say, oh yeah I hear a hiss too but none of them will bother to protect their ears, foolish, I think. Finally, 85db is the OSHA standard for exposure for a day and as far as I am concerned it's way too high in db and time.

 

First of all, congratulations for trying to help your husband. Tinnitus is hard for other people to understand and a lot of the time people who are suffering feel left behind.

So, as you don't have Tinnitus, here's a list of things I wish people around me knew from the beggining:

1) You are not yourself. Your judgement cannot be trusted. Tinnitus leads to some very weird thoughts. Also, if you can't sleep and feel tortured all the time, you can't trust your brain to make the best decisions. So, if needed be, drag your husband to consultations, be a part of the decision process, don't just let him decide by himself. His mind is messing with him.
2) Avoid bringing the subject: It's hard, but if everyone around you keep talking about Tinnitus, it will only make things worse. If he talks about it, fine. but try to avoid bringing on the subject.
3) Distractions, distractions, distractions. Go on a Vacation, follow a new TV series, go for walks. If his Tinnitus is "bad" at afternoon, walking at the park is better than staying at home.
4) It's not definitive. Avoid taking definitive solutions. In most cases Tinnitus is not a Disability. You can adapt. your husband can get some molded earplugs, or wear noise cancelling headphones at work, chances are that it will take some time but he'll be ok.

Best,
Zug

 

@digit , I have avoided commenting on your post because I felt that I could not ad anything to the conversation, and to be honest I still cannot. But, after reading @Zug 's response I wanted to at least add a sincere thank you for trying to help your husband. Many of us here have less than sympathetic spouses (I do not blame mine, tinnitus is difficult to understand for someone who has not experienced it, and she has concerns of her own). But I do know how much having someone in your life who cares and tries to understand can mean to someone trying to cope with tinnitus.

So, while I cannot trill add anything to this conversation, I thank you for trying to understand what your husband is going through and trying to help. Despite his misfortune in developing tinnitus, he is a very fortunate man to have such loving and caring wife. I am confident that, with your help, he will make it though this.

 

Hi all , I'm Digit's husband.
I knew she was posting this but I've kept a low profile while adjusting to the Fluoxetine.
I'm now on 60mg in the morning and 20mg of amitriptyline at bed time.
The low moods have gone, I feel much better and the T doesn't get so high now.
I was flat on 40mg so my doctor upped it to 60 and though its only been a few weeks, I feel good so started reading the above replies and decided to reply myself

With respect to work.... I feel trapped.
For the last year, work has been the best thing to pass the time, but I can sense the noise from the Data Centres are raising the T.
I now wear 3m Peltor X5 37 dB Ear Defenders but have tried various other methods like Bose noise cancelling in-ear headphones with and without music, sounds, etc. I've also tried ear plugs + ear defenders at the same time.
It's so hard to tell, but I don't believe they help. The same daily pattern repeats
I wake as a 5, by the afternoon I'm a 7, then by the evening a 9. However some good news at last, since the 60mg of Flu I've stopped getting the 9's.
We had a 2 week holiday recently while on 40mg. The first week was horrendous because of the lack of work, but the second week I levelled out to a 5 all throughout the day and managed to read a couple of novels.
First 2 days back to work were good as I didn't need to enter any Data Centres but on the 3rd day I spent a couple of hours in a DC with my ear defenders on and when I got back to the car I was a 7 then stayed that way for the rest of the day.

I'm 55 now and would love to stop work completely but cannot afford it. We could survive if my companies PHI paid up but without asking HR I don't know.
I have to be careful as each couple of years the company goes through a redundancy cull which I wouldn't want.

I don't suffer from constant stress, but when I do, the T is more noticeable but drops when the stress goes.
The problem is with the noise. Just a few minutes inside a DC's seems causes the T to get stuck in its daily ramp up routine for the next 4 or 5 days.

Does anyone know if this is grounds for me to use the noisy environment of the DC's as a reason to have to give up work and claim income protection until I retire in 10 years time?

 

@Digit_dad It's hard to say with underwritings of income protection. Some may cover, others not. Income protection sometimes has a deafness exclusion, so if you are unable to work due to tinnitus or a related aural condition you may not be able to claim.

For SDI, take in consideration that OSHA permissible exposure limit (PEL) is 90 decibels for all workers for an 8 hour days. Also if applying for SDI, detail medical records and written statements from doctors are valuable to attain SDI on the first try.

 

I'm glad that I never pursued the route of becoming disabled: the last thing I needed when my T started was to sit at home, listen to it, and stew over my incredible misfortune. That would have driven my T up to 10 and I'd be dead now. Please don't seek a disability election for T, because it could make things much worse when your whole life (including your source of income) gets to revolve around the T. Because the T will take over, it's an incredibly powerful "feature" of our auditory cortex -- don't let it win.

 

I have to disagree a little bit. It depends on each individual, a type of personality, a type of job...