Terrified of the Future...

The day after my 25th birthday January 14th I woke up with a few spasms in my right ear. I immediately got freaked out but I know the way I am and I didn't want to focus on it too much or I knew I'd get myself into trouble. It went away later that day and I was relieved.

On January 24th I woke up and it was fluttering like MAD and I started to freak out so I googled my symptoms all day and couldnt find anything solid. I hate going to the Doctor because they take so long so see you and then refer you and it just seems like they dont care. And having something incurable has always been my worst fear.

I am now living in my nightmare. Saturday afternoon Jan 28th I was laying down starting to feel okay about my ear thinking "okay it spasms, but it's not all the time and it's only in one ear so thats good". THEN my ear started ringing and Ive been trying to figure out if I gave this to myself by over thinking and researching about a bunch of things or if its related to the spasms that started in my right ear. And i also cant figure out if it's only in my right ear.

I went to the hospital on Sunday and basically nothing happened. She looked in my ear and said there was a bit of fluid behind it and it would clear up in a couple months and do a nasal rinse. I cried myself to sleep in my boyfriends arms and could not get relief from the sound, he held me so tight all night. The next day I woke up and couldn't go to work because I was so anxious. I cried as my boyfriend rocked me back and forth and then I threw up. I dont think I threw up for any of reason than anxiety.

The next day my mother took me to an audiologist to check my hearing and he said my hearing was fine and there was no fluid and tinnitus has no cure and then basically walked me out of his office.

I have been depressed and anxious ever since. I'm just a miserable wreck. Everyone in my life is telling me it's going to go away. Literally everyone but I really dont believe that. My mother knows someone who knows someone who managed to expedite my ENT referral. After being on the internet for weeks researching this and reading all these things about tinnitus I just have no hope for what this ENT is going to tell me. I'm preparing to walk in there and for her to tell me I have to live with this the rest of my life.

So far I've researched tinnitus hearing aids and been to a consultation with a hypnotist in preparation of a doctor telling me this is forever. Everyone thinks I'm crazy but I'm trying to speed up this habituation process any way I can.

 

Hi Liana. T can be caused by many things, fluid and foreign bodies behind the ear drum and be one of them. Ensure that your ear drum is checked properly by the ENT specialist. I hope this is the case and can be rectified for you.

 

@Liana - I am so sorry to hear you are struggling!! It sucks and there's no way around it. BUT you can and will overcome this!!! I know and can relate it's so hard to even comprehend at this point, but you will get thru this! I can testify!! My T was and is so gnarly, but I am living a full life despite T! You just need to get stabilized. Get your proper sleep on, exercise, eat right, and most important.... try to have some fun!!!!

Peace and rest to you!!!

Jeff

 

@Jeff M. I'm trying believe me. Thank you for relating...at this point I feel like no one does. My mom said she had it for 5 months and it went away. My dad said he's had it before. But I dont know what's going to happen with me. I'm in a scary dark place

 

@Liana The first 4-6 months are the worst (sorry)! Your limbic system is trying desperately to adjust to this new threat. BUT it will adjust and you WILL get thru this!! Believe me, I was right where you are at one point. I ended up in the ER because I was afraid that I might hurt or even worse myself. I didn't imagine life could continue with T. That was 4 1/2 years ago. I pushed thu and am living a good life now despite T. You will too!! It takes effort and motivation and support (TT), but it can and will happen!!! Take heart and stay connected!! Praying you find encouragement and support. You are not alone!!!

Jeff

 

Welcome to the forum, Liana. You are just being normal to not believe that as we all went through that phase of T suffering that no matter what everybody said, we just thought our T is so severe and the suffering so deep that the future must be dark and bleak, full of suffering until our grave. Like you and many new members, we fell for the lie of the T bully and suffer so much because of this 'cognitive disortion' of Catastrophic Thinking (as in CBT). I have ultra high pitch dog whistle T and severe hyperacusis on top of that as if T not bad enough. I also had suffered PTSD and anxiety panic disorder prior to T&H. So I was overwhelmed by relentless anxiety and panic attacked daily due to my prior weakened nerve. Everyday was a dark long day of suffering. I thought like you that the future would be all doomed with intense suffering and I have doubt when others said otherwise.

So wrong as it turns out. Today I live a normal, productive, happy and absolutely enjoyable life. What dark future??? I am not alone as many members get better and write their success stories. Please check out the success stories in Knowledge Base to give you hope that after the initial suffering, better time will come. Try to learn their strategies and insights. If you want to check out my strategies, for brevity, here is the link. I also include the link to the most read success story on TT. Better days will come back. Just believe it. Don't despair. Take good care. God bless.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/from-darkness-to-light-how-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/back-to-silence.7172/

Try to get good sleep which will help your T. If you need something to help out, perhaps Melatonin will help if you don't like prescribed sleeping pills. You may also want something to mask your T so you won't be so stressed out with it, especially at bed time. If you haven't done so, here are some suggestions:

1) Mask at bed time so you can sleep better. Find whatever sounds/music that are soothing to you. You can use a sound machine or sound pillow for this, or a computer with speakers.

2) If you need masking on the go, try load an ipod with nature sounds or music using itune. If you have a smart phone, you can download free APPs for soothing or T-masking sounds.

3) If you have computer and speakers, you can try these excellent masking sounds too:

TT's audio player: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/audioplayer/

or this online sound library, particularly the self-mix nature sounds: https://mynoise.net

or download free sound generator ‘aire freshener’: http://www.peterhirschberg.com/mysoftware.html

or search youtube with words like 'tinnitus masking sounds', 'white noise', 'rain sound' etc.

 

From my experience on this board Tinnitus is more likely to go away if:
-You're young (check)
-It wasn't caused by hearing damage (check)
-It's intermittent (?)

It DOES go away in many people. Mine did after four years. You just rarely hear about success stories because people move on with their lives instead of talking about it.

 

UPDATE:

A lot has happened to me since this last post. I figured I owed a response to you guys so you can have some hope for yourselves.

My tinnitus did not go away. HOWEVER sometimes we have things going on that can make it worse. I had alot of relationship problems with the person I was with at the time. The day after we broke up the volume of my tinnitus decreased significantly. I still hear it all the time. But I've changed my perspective about it.

 

Im at 6 months and kinda hopeful but still stressed about it -

 

Congratulations on your habituation, and thanks for the update