Shooting a Gun (9mm) without Hearing Protection Gave Me Tinnitus, Hyperacusis, and Hearing Loss

Your story feels similar to mine, except I was exposed to loud music rather than gunshots, in May last year.

I lost 50 dB at 8 kHz (and above) in one ear, the hearing starts declining at some point after 6 kHz. I developed tinnitus in that ear and soon after it also started in the other ear, which has no measurable hearing damage. It fluctuates so much that I can't tell whether it's gotten better. Initially I also had hyperacusis and some distortion, the distortion went away and the hyperacusis got a lot better after a while.

For me the most frustrating thing isn't the hearing loss or the tinnitus itself, but the anxiety it sometimes causes when the sound changes, and the paranoia over losing more of my hearing. I am afraid of loud sounds. It takes so little to damage the ears, and strangely, some are affected while others are not, when exposed to the same sounds (or drugs, or infections).

 

Well, the news for FX-322 wasn't so good. What a true shame. I for one put a lot of hope into it, but it seems that we still have a long way to go.

I've realized more than ever that this is a long game I'm going to have to be a part of. I just don't know if there is much now I can do about it now. I am going to try to listen to white/pink noise at just the level where my hyperacusis is not bothersome, and see if that helps over time. That is really what annoys me the most, even more so than the constant tinnitus. At this point, I've habituated mostly. I only worry that my current state (which is frustrating yet tolerable) is going to worsen.

It seems, according to some of the research I have read, that acoustic traumas tend to get better with time, however not always. It's been about 300 days now and things have certainly gotten better, but my hyperacusis/reactive tinnitus is still very bothersome. I could live with this, honestly, so much more freely if it weren't for the annoying broken speaker/ringy sound that accompanies me whenever there are certain noises. For example, there are certain notes on my piano that aggravate my tinnitus, while the other notes do not. It is very strange, and I wonder if there's a way to attenuate that. Maybe time will help me, maybe not. I hate just hoping that things will get better without knowing for sure, but I guess that's the way life goes.

I still think back to the day where everything lined up... Not knowing that the songs I was blasting in my car would be the last songs I would hear with normal ears. I'm glad it isn't worse, but it really sucks to see science failing with this problem time and time again. I keep thinking to myself that my 30s will be my best years. I certainly hope they will be sooner. Right now I think back to 2019 and how that was my best year really. Who knows what my life, what fate, will bring.

 

The dysacusis really is all over the place for me. I do find sleep masking and occasional Gabapentin helps turn them down a lot. I could listen to music today on my drugcation.

 

I can still listen to music, albeit not at the same volume or as freely as I was previously able to. In that sense I am lucky; I don't know what I would do without music. I just wish things were different. I think I am going to start with the white/pink noise and see if that helps me over time. Without the reactive tinnitus I could live with this, at least until something comes that may help in the future. I am not holding my breath though.

 

I’m just here to give an update since tonight marks one year since my accident. For the last few months I have done better with habituation and coping, although it still annoys me a bit. I find myself not thinking about it as much, with days where I forget about it. Sometimes I do have days where it is, for whatever reason, more concerning, where my tinnitus will be markedly louder, with coinciding ear pain and fullness, but for the most part it stays pretty constant.

I have mostly come to accept this new normal in my life, and have gotten to the point where I know I can live with it provided it stays the way it is. I hope it does get better in the next year(s), and pray to dear god it does not get worse. I do have fears, since I work in an emergency room where you regularly encounter adults/children who are screaming, that one day things will become much worse.

Thankfully, I haven’t had an event, loud as it may have been, that has noticeably worsened my condition so far. I do want to eventually find a position in medicine where I don’t have to worry so much about being exposed to loud noises such as a screaming child. I have been (relatively) lucky so far, and I hope this luck continues. I have read many stories on this site of people in similar situations being fine for years, then boom suddenly things are unbearable, and that honestly scares me. I am optimistic that my condition will improve further as is most likely, but the future is unknown and I worry that I won’t be able to do the things I want to do in my life as a result.

I think that time is on my side and, luck permitting, there will be a treatment/cure/solution to this where I will be able to enjoy my life to the fullest again. I wonder, what would having my hearing back to even close to normal be like? It bewilders me that I have lived so long with this, yet I am aware that things could be much worse than they are.

I am about to start nursing school for my BSN, and I pray that I will be able to build a life for myself in service of others, and to feel a commitment to the world that is larger than myself. I think that I have to; it helps me cope with this, and in my time working in medicine I have gained an appreciation for the little things in life, and have a much deeper perspective into the kind of lives some people live. So many of us take our health for granted, and I did too. Many of us are robbed of our health, unfair as it may be. I try to live my life now grateful of what I do have, and what I want to do with the life I have now. That’s all I can do, and it is all any of us can do.

Keep going, be grateful, and take care of yourself.

 

I have another update here in my condition, at about a year and a month since this happened.

Unfortunately, two days ago, a child of about 2 years of age screamed almost directly into my ear while I was at work (in an ER). This happened to me several times over the last year (although most of the time I would have some hearing protection) however this time I was strapped for time and went in without. As soon as it happened, I felt a strange "pop" in my ears and an immediate sense of vertigo and nausea. It stunned me in a way that I've never experienced, which was and still is very concerning for me. Thankfully this happened right before I was done for the day, and I went home and took NAC, a high dose of Magnesium, B vitamins, etc. to try to prevent as much damage as I could. Since it was so brief I imagine the damage could not have been too bad, but it was also at a very high frequency which is where my hearing damage is anyway.

Right now, my ear is painful (more so than usual) and the hyperacusis that was settling down before is certainly worse than it was previously. I am hoping that will get better over the next few days, and I am loading up on all the otoprotective supplements that I can while making the attempt at reducing the sounds around me.

Having another event like this is honestly one of my worst fears now, but now that it happened I'm focusing on reducing stress as well as taking action to mitigate this where I can. This also really illuminated to me how I cannot put my guard down with this, and that I need to be more careful especially around kids.

I am still hoping that one day this will be behind me, provided medical science gets to the point where they can fix me. I'll be waiting!

 

My son has yelled near my ear about 3-4 times since onset about 3 months. I had maybe 1-2 day spikes.

 

I’m new with tinnitus for other reasons. But just wanted to offer you some hope. My ex husband had tinnitus from shooting a gun as well many years ago. He was scared it wouldn’t go away too. It was many years ago but his did go away. Probably within a week or month. Can’t remember now. So hang in there!

 

According to Google, I've gone 460 days with this. It has pretty much been at the same level for a while, although perhaps I could do more to help with the pain (not so much for the ringing, but maybe).

I am going to try going back to acupuncture since there is moderate evidence supporting its use for headaches (I have chronic ear pain now like many of you out there) and we will see if it has any effect on my tinnitus.

Some days I can handle it pretty easily, and it doesn't really bother me. Other days, it's difficult to deal with. I also will sometimes have mild vestibular symptoms, although it's not that common (thankfully). I have made the decision that after I graduate nursing school, I'll leave the emergency department (probably going to cardiology) since the ED is just too loud for me. It's unfortunate that I have to consider my disease when choosing my career, but I suppose it could be worse. I need to find a position where I am not exposed to loud noises and chaos all the time, and can protect what hearing I've got left. I'm still holding out for a treatment relatively soon. I hope this doesn't worsen until then, but part of that is protecting myself from injurious sound as much as I can.

I still think almost every day about the thousand different ways I could have prevented this from happening, but certainly not so much as I did a year ago. I look back, and god was I a mess. I still have trouble even after so long sometimes, but I feel much more so than I did before like I still have a future ahead of me. I feel hopeful that I'll have the chance to be free from this, and grateful that I still have options in my life provided that my condition doesn't worsen.

 

I've been living with this for about a year and a half, so I'm not holding my breath for the ringing to go away (although I'd love for it to, and it's technically not impossible). For most people post acute acoustic injury, they have a temporary threshold shift (TTS) that resolves within days to weeks, while for a small minority (aka me) you get a permanent threshold shift (PTS).

I was with six other people that day, and they all fired more bullets out of that pistol than I did. I walked away because my hearing was so messed up. They were all okay, and only had tinnitus for a couple of days afterward. It was just the luck of the draw for me, you know? I joke around that I have some sort of curse placed on me from something I did in a previous life lol.

 

Today is day 506! That makes it about 16 months since this happened to me. Very interesting, how relatively acquainted I am with this now. I have habituated to my tinnitus, although I still get spikes nearly every day for a while that annoy me. I perhaps need to spend more time taking care of myself, although it is difficult since I am in nursing school. I am also perhaps less motivated in life, given my stressful situation. I noticed that this affliction, among other stressors, are exhausting me in many respects. I am still moving forward, but not in the way I would like. I don't feel as fulfilled with what I am doing for whatever reasons. However, I digress.

I still think too much about how I could have avoided this. I feel like it's part of my identity now. It's not difficult to feel that way when your sensory experience always includes this new, annoying thing. I'd say the most annoying things about this problem is the ear pain and the broken-microphone hyperacusis/reactive tinnitus/whatever it is. I'm hoping to soon try acupuncture again to see if it helps, as well as perhaps notch therapy/TRT. I hope there is something that can help me with this annoyance, and I unfortunately haven't done more sooner due to feeling hopeless about fixing it. Lame part is, that feeling might be right. BUT, that does not mean that I should give up.

 

Hearing problems are exhausting in the same manner that visual problems would be exhausting if there were no glasses to correct visual problems. Struggling to hear or to make out speech in noise, or struggling to ignore tinnitus, or to avoid noise in case of hyperacusis... all this is tiring and exhausting.

For me it helped but provided very limited relief, only lasted for maybe a day, so it was not really worth it. I had a few acupuncture sessions at a Chinese clinic with Chinese practitioners and then I stopped going.

 

Good to know. I know someone who can do electroacupuncture, and I might just try that out and see if it helps. Who knows? I've found that white noise in high frequency instantly lowers my reactive tinnitus, but only for a short period of time.

 

I'm gonna write into this rather than doing my homework because I can't focus.

According to google it's been 594 days since the accident. That means it's been 19 months. Over a year and a half of this. For some reason it seems like I've always lived like this. I'm starting to forget what it was like without it. I suppose that's what happens with chronic illness in general.

I haven't noticed much of a change in my condition for months. I suppose, it did get better from being worse while I was working night shift for about 4-5 months (which I would not recommend). I am at that point where I can't imagine it really getting much better than this without some sort of as-of-yet unobtainable regenerative medication. I hope that one day I can feel what it was like without this, but who knows? This may be the way it is for the rest of my life. It's still hard to imagine that one incident like that could change so much. It scares me that one day it'll get worse, and there will be nothing I can do. I mean, what can you do? I can just hope that my youth is enough at the moment to keep me where I am at (alongside a non-inflammatory diet). It hurts, and I still have regrets. How could I have been so reckless? Why did the stars align for this to happen to me? The problem is there's no satisfactory answer for that.

I went on vacation before school started this week, and I very much enjoyed that. I drove through AZ, CA, OR, and saw the ocean, the redwoods, Joshua Tree. Despite this pain, I felt alive. I relished every moment, watching the waves crash, for I know now just how precious it all is. If anyone reads this ramble, congrats on getting this far, and I wish you the best.

 

How are you doing?

 

@sensualmosquito, I feel for you, I enjoy reading your progress and positive attitude towards this condition.

I’m on my 18-19 month as well, and I also have difficult moments. I think learning to live with this condition, without anxiety has been the hardest thing to overcome. So far there hasn’t been a day where I regret how I got my tinnitus. It has gotten better for me as well in terms of coping, but there are those days where it’s harder. I’m trying to live my life as I did before but there are moments where I’m hesitant and I end up turning down opportunities such as going to watch Top Gun with my friends. I wonder how much of that is my anxiety due to the condition vs me feeling sorry for myself and feeling depressed at times.

Hopefully in another year I’ll continue to find ways to cope or habituate to the perception of it. Until then I look forward to reading about your journey. I hope to share my story when I feel like I have fully recovered.

 

I haven't been on here for a while, but I figured I would make a little update just to maybe get some of my problems on paper. I was doing quite a bit better for the last 6 months or so, to the level where my hyperacusis/tinnitus were seldomly crossing that attention threshold throughout my day to day. I've always still had days where this happens, or weird spikes, and pain (a daily annoyance) but I was doing better overall.

Then I made a mistake; I went to a concert (I know, insane) albeit with NAC and Magnesium beforehand and hearing protection, 4 days ago from the time of this writing.

Since then, despite my diligence trying to be careful, I had a resurgence of aural fullness (albeit mild) and an increase in pain, hyperacusis, and to some degree tinnitus (but mostly hyperacusis). It brings me back to my first injury, the fear, the pain... This time's not nearly so bad, but it's difficult not to feel a sense of anxiety that I set myself back a couple years. I can see that some of the problems (like increased tinnitus in the shower) that disappeared over a year ago came back; I hope it doesn't take so long to improve, like it did with that life-changing day over 2 years ago. Funny thing is, I didn't quite realize just how much better I had gotten with this until it changed for the worse, just because I cautiously decided to do something that carried more risk for me, because someone I care about really wanted me to. It just sucks that I can't be a normal 20-something, and I never will be.

I'll post an update maybe in a few weeks about where things are (hopefully better)!

Be careful out there everyone, and I hope the best.

 

Sorry to hear about your increase @sensualmosquito .It's an easy trap to fall into when your tinnitus has been so good for so long and the accompanying symptoms somewhat disappear. Ears will always be compromised after any acoustic trauma and even though you took the precaution of earplugs and NAC, one is never fully out of the woods and will never be. Concerts and noisy environments will always be a risk for us, some get lucky and unfortunately others get caught. I hope you get back to your previous baseline and that this spike will settle in time.