Silence Before Sleep And Blissing Out On Beer

Hi all. I can't put an exact date to when my tinnitus started, but it was sometime around January this year. I work from home designing book covers, and part of what I do involves rendering 3D images. Some of these images can take hours, and at the time I was using a computer that was on it's way out (and noisy because of it), and had lots of deadlines to meet which meant working late into the night. I was very conscious of the racket the computer was making, bordering on paranoid over whether the neighbours could hear it or whether it was keeping the rest of the household awake etc, and was probably paying more attention to the noise than I would otherwise have done. One night I shut the machine down, went to the bathroom and was surprised to find that the loud hissing noise I might normally associate with the cistern filling up again wasn't getting any quieter as I walked away. Wondering about this was quickly replaced by wondering why the PC still hadn't shut down. Then I looked, and it had, but I could still hear it as plain as day.

I've been hearing this noise ever since, with minor variations. Mostly it's a hissing sound, like a very loud seashell, and I feel like my head has got a constant slow puncture. At other times it has a slight metallic edge to it, like clanging in a factory. The noisy computer departed about three months ago, but I can still hear it even though the rest of the family tells me that this one doesn't make a sound.

My usual practice with medical problems is to stick my head in the sand and ignore them, and so I convinced myself that this was just an earworm - a song you hear and can't get out of your head - and that it would go away eventually. After six months or so it was obvious even to me that it was going nowhere, so I went to the GP and was referred to an audiologist for an appointment earlier this month. On the morning that I was supposed to go, my daughter fell ill and so I took her to the doctor and rescheduled my own appointment, which won't be until the end of February now. Wondering if there was anything I could do to help myself in the meantime, I found the forums.

Although the noise drives me nuts quite often, a lot of the time I don't hear it unless I listen to see if it's there (which I don't go out of my way to do), but it's really noticeable in a quiet room, if I'm overtired or if I'm actively trying to listen to something else, e.g. the TV. I've known for about five years that my hearing isn't what it used to be anyway. It was around then that I was trying to take my daughter's temperature with a thermometer that turned out to be dodgy, and complained that it wasn't making the 'beep' sound that it was supposed to. Everyone else in the room told me that it had been beeping like crazy. I also have trouble sometimes determining which direction noises are coming from - when everybody automatically looks towards the sound of someone's mobile phone ringing, I'm usually the one automatically looking the other way!

Anyway, back to the tinnitus. It's not the noise that interests me, it's the rare occasions when there is no noise at all. I can't help feeling that these can tell me something useful.

I get about a minute each day when I can actually listen for the sound and hear nothing but silence, and it's the minute before I drop off to sleep. I'm not even thinking about tinnitus when this happens, I'm thinking about completely random things. I've suffered from the odd incidence of 'Exploding Head Syndrome' on dropping off in the past (hearing a loud bang that only exists in your head), and the first time I heard silence just before I fell asleep was just as shocking. It was like someone had flicked a switch. This was a few weeks ago, and happens pretty much every night now. The minute I move (not necessarily my head, even a foot or finger will do it) the noise instantly comes back again, but if I keep still then I'm asleep within a minute. I've tried to analyze what might be happening in this period, but can never stay awake long enough!

The only other times I could listen for the noise and not hear it have been when I've been drinking and maybe more than slightly trollied. This has happened twice now, each for a couple of hours. Much as I'd like to devote further research to this, I probably don't have the funds and definitely don't have the stamina that I used to - we're lucky if we get out once a month these days, and almost always have hangovers to remind us the next morning, even though we drink a fraction of what we once used to be able to without feeling a thing. Furthermore, it's not reliable. Not so long ago I was sitting outside the pub, tinnitus forgotten, and about to ask my husband why on earth they'd put a table right next to a storm drain. Hazily I realised that a) this was our local and there had never been a drain there before, and b) it wasn't raining. I turned my head to see what the noise was, and the noise turned with me. Tinnitus remembered. Maybe it's a certain brand of beer that causes the silence, and I have a duty to investigate them all. How awful. But if someone's gotta do it...

 

Hello @FancyNancy

Nice post, but I focused on the last paragraph. I like to have a good beer too. If it helps, great.
Merry Christmas to you and your family.

 

Thanks, James. Merry Christmas, everybody!