Suicidal

My friend is driving us in their Subaru. I forget the model, might be a forester. It's not very loud. It's fairly new. I would ride in my boyfriend's car when I was a bit less severe and it was a beat up old loud Toyota Camry with horrible brakes.

I drive a Chevy but haven't touched it in months. I tolerated road noise before with no protection but ever since randomly worsening in the last 2 weeks I don't know what will happen.

Tinnitus isn't really a concern for me more than hyperacusis. I took a 15-minute drive to a hotel yesterday and my left ear was in pain. I felt a spike when a truck went by. This was with double protection too. So I can't imagine what 15 hours will do for me.

 

I have a friend who has a Subaru Forrester. Nice vehicle! Anything 2015 or newer is great. I think I was in a 2018. Very quiet SUV. You can't avoid every noise. You can only try to anticipate and be prepared.

Toyota Camrys are pretty quiet for a family sedan. Certain years are better than older ones.

My tinnitus is way worse than my hyperacusis but I still have ear pain quite frequently.

Have ear muffs handy but I recommend taking breaks from wearing them if you can. Maybe frequent pit stops for breaks from the traffic/road noise and some time to give your ears a break from both noise and wearing muffs/plugs?

 

@Chinmoku, Hell is basically a place of never ending torture 24/7. Sound familiar? (pun intended)

 

It does, in this extreme suffering I started to think that we might be in hell already and that us being unaware of it is part of the punishment. Then again, there are people whose tinnitus disappears all of a sudden after years, without rhyme or reason, so maybe this is not hell for everyone. It feels like hell for sure right now though.

 

We must've been really bad people in our past lives.

 

If you look at how sick industrialized life makes people (too much noise, bad air, sedentary lifestyle, crowding) I think we’ve pretty much all been bad from that point of view.

 

It's easier to picture that life is meaningless. The thought of doing something to deserve this is horrifying.

 

Yes, when you suffer so intensely you only wish for the pain to end, and in the rare moments when you can think you try to rationalize this crazy suffering. Except it doesn't make sense. I don't believe much in Karma. The fact is that the Earth population has been growing so much that the idea of reincarnation/rebirth does not work, there is no conservation of "souls", unless you start counting souls/egos traveling from other realms or dimensions to preserve the balance. Also, Karma is based on cause and effect but we know that at quantum level the ordinary laws of cause and effect break down and become something much weirder than cause and effect as we understand them in the macro world. So Karma is dubious. The Bible has places where it says you are punished up to the third or fourth generation, and other places (including Jesus) saying that the son does not respond for the sins of the father. I agree this looks like punishment, though. For sure, if this is the result of evolution then evolution has failed us big time. This level of suffering is unreal, sometimes it seems too much to be the result of a purely mechanical evolutionary processes driven by locally random attempts to sample the space of the fittest to survive.

Sorry for the rant. It distracts me 10% from the horror.

 

I also have to take the car from time to time and am wearing foam earplugs + NC headphones. This is really better than foam ear plugs + normal ear muffs.

 

Does this happen for people with hearing loss or noise induced?

 

Both, from what I have seen. But no one understands the distinctive features of people having tinnitus disappear even after many years. If you look at the success stories in this forum you will see a few of these cases.

 

Its odd explaining suicide to medical practitioners because I think that they think for people with tinnitus it's coming from this highly emotional self-destructive and spiteful point of view, where in reality it's just like a logical conclusion. Well that's how I always looked at it, just a logical way to end the suffering and prevent any more pain to others around me. Suicide is in no way a selfish thing to do.

 

I think it’s wrong that euthanasia is illegal in most countries. There should be suicide pills and a peaceful way out if someone’s tinnitus gets so bad. Especially as there is no limit as to how bad it can get.

Life is pointless anyway and our human lives mean nothing so why should people suffer for the sake of it. I feel like people who are against suicide are just ignorant. I guess wanting to die isn’t a bad thing really as we will all be dead eventually, it is what our intention is.

 

So in your opinion, would the different mechanism of action make it have a different effect on problems such as tinnitus and hyperacusis then benzos do?

 

It's been more than a year, I know that's nothing in tinnitus world, but this is hell. A neverending nightmare and I don't want to live like this.

I wish I had something resembling faith, maybe would be easier to see sense, or a plan behind this. Life just seems pointless suffering.

 

Does anyone else perceive they're getting worse tinnitus on an almost daily basis or have I finally lost my mind?

 

I do, and neither I nor doctors understand why. Sorry you are in the same situation.

 

I look forward to dying. This constant suffering is hell.

 

And then people would no longer ask “are you sure it’s not caused by your anxiety?” or suggest doing yoga. This really is hell.

 

I thought I survived my long drive to my new, quieter home. I felt elated for the first two days but now I am definitely feeling the fallout from it. Not a lot of pain but my intolerance to noise is at its absolute worst. New tinnitus tones but no increase in loudness.

I see people who say their hyperacusis was at its worse from plates, voices, paper, and water. I can't tolerate any sort of object sliding across a surface, touching blankets, jackets, or even the light scraping of plastic on plastic. I can barely roll over in bed without it being too much.

On top of that something in the house is flaring up my asthma, which has been worse since my chemical accident. Comes and goes depending on triggers. No idea what's causing it but having to use all of my strength to force a proper breath is noisy too. And I'm afraid it won't let up since the cause isn't clear. It's issue after issue.

I'm dancing between "noise bad" and "bone conduction bad" constantly and I have no idea what to do. Every move seems false. But with how sensitive I am I can't imagine trying to sleep without it. But is my snoring making it worse too?

The more I analyze what caused my ear issues, along with all my other symptoms, the more I'm convinced there is no helping my case at all. It's too complicated and multifaceted on top of being such an unknown condition as is. I hope I don't offend anyone by saying this, but I really wish I just blasted my ears and had bad tinnitus like everyone else, at least then I could be a tad more confident. No idea if I have any hidden hearing loss either, though my hearing wasn't great (not diagnosed) before I got hyperacusis and tinnitus.

I am afraid that this was the set back that did me in, and there is no coming back from this. No matter how much I try to strategize my day to day, protect, and isolate. No matter how much of a vegetable I can be. I honestly don't think I have the will to find out what won't help me or what else I'm about to lose.

Sorry for a long post. I'm just obsessively checking the forum lately for crumbs of hope and needed to let this out.

 

I can't necessarily provide hope, just company. I also have been exceptionally down lately. I have a progressive autoimmune disease driving the whole problem, and as far as I know, I am the only one on the forum with severe hyperacusis caused by this. Absolutely horrible outlook -- nonstop suicidal thoughts. I also don't want to be disrespectful, but I am semi jealous of the people with noise-induced causes, as there is a hell of a lot to be optimistic about in terms of regeneration medicine. I'm totally fucked since the cause of the disease is incurable.

I also know what it's like to be bothered by every single sound, even with earmuffs on. There's a good chance at least some of your spike is temporary. Although noise is not the main cause of my problem, it can make me worse, and usually when noise helps make it worse, it semi recovers back to baseline (which is still very bad).

 

@SadMan

My tinnitus has not improved. It rarely fluctuates now although it seems worse at night. However, it's extremely loud 24/7, even in the morning. I don't know if loud noises or other acoustic traumas contributed to it worsening or if it's just an unexplainable progression because I am not sure. I can only speculate because I live in a noisy area. Frequent sirens, truck noises, trains and construction close by. I also have ear pain at times. I don't know how to express or describe the tinnitus severity so I rate it. Usually, 9 - 10/10 with 10/10 as so loud I want my life to end. It's bad. I wish this research stuff here could become a reality although I doubt it will be sufficiently effective for severe tinnitus. I hope I answered your questions. Feel free to message anytime.

 

Yes. I’ve been living in a practically silent environment... and it’s still worsening. At 24, I’m really not even living at this point. I really don’t want to be here.

 

C'mon guys my tinnitus wins gold at the TinniOlympics...
I'm so proud. I have the worst tinnitus in the world... what an honor.

 

Right when I thought I was at my worst I've now developed extreme vertigo and have been vomiting all day.

I have no idea if this is at an related to my hyperacusis and if I've developed some sort of vestibular dysfunction now... Is that even possible? And I can't begin to even look into that because I can barely type this as is.

I regret my choices and I don't want to live.

 

I've had vertigo before and after tinnitus. I don't know what the relationship is between them or if there is any link.
I was just really dizzy and had headaches too. I had to go to a physiotherapy place to get help doing the Epley/Brandt-Daroff exercises (to make sure I was doing them effectively) and then continue them at home until symptoms went away.

 

This is one area that an ENT can sometimes treat. I had severe vertigo for about a year and haven't had an attack in over a year and a half.

Don't let them tell you that you have Meniere's or vestibular migraines without a viral titer panel (particularly in the herpes family, i had high EBV titers and treating that resolved my very extreme symptoms, in fact I'm 100% asymptomatic for vestibular symptoms).

Vestibular migraines can often be managed with diet and certain supplements.

Otonomy has a drug in phase 3 for Meniere's that looks extremely promising but a low salt diet can sometimes dramatically help (message me if you want tips on this, it can be hard to follow).

Klonopin can also halt attacks by suppressing the vestibular system (attacks were the only time I ever took benzos).

PT with a vestibular specialist can also be extremely helpful.

 

Although I have a different medical problem, I agree with this. When my hyperacusis and tinnitus began, my most severe symptom was actually balance issues, which are now resolved 100%. From all of my reading, vestibular rehab is actually pretty useful. It appears that, in general, training the brain to adapt to balance issues is much easier than training it to adapt to hearing problems.

 

You guys give me hope.

After the elevation change, I just had a huge onset of vertigo out of nowhere, after a week. I am in the second day of it. Feel slightly better but I haven't eaten in 2 days and can't keep any liquid down. I was really worried that my already broken ears got shaken up somehow and that it was permanent. I'm glad to see this can be at least somewhat treatable.

I've heard of people losing balance from noises as well and I just really don't want to be in this category, on top of everything else I have.

 

If you are having attacks *specifically* after loud noises mention this to your ENT. That particular symptom is called "tullio phenomenon" and it can apply to certain structural problems like superior canal dehiscence.

Pressure changes can be a factor with Meniere's but also things like perilymph fistula. I hope you made an appointment...