Thank GOD for This Forum

Hello all...

I'm on day 4 of my most recent bout with tinnitus and this board has been a godsend. I say "most recent" because I've realized I've probably been in the mild/negligent category for sometime and only noticed it on rare occasions when it subsequently went away (or at least back to being unnoticeable) after a few hours to a day. Sometimes it would hit me in very quiet rooms and then subside so I didn't give it much thought.

Hindsight really is 20/20 because had I paid better attention I'd have known to take precautions to avoid this onset (or spike, whatever the case may be) and protected my ears. Needless to say this is noise-induced (concert in a small club venue), and although I left when the music ended-up being startlingly loud apparently those 10 minutes were all it took. I spent the rest of the night crying, unable to hear anything but this god-awful ringing or even sleep. On top of that I started out with a cold that night (sure that didn't help), which has worsened over the past few days.

I've been to my GP who's informed me my eardrums look "beautiful" and there's no sign of infection...so here we are. I've been referred to ENT, but they're so booked scheduling is a month out so I'll just have to wait. The hardest part has been managing my anxiety. I've dealt with anxiety and depression since age 13 and it's been an uphill battle to become the functioning (mostly) person I am today.

Probably because I've been in therapy off and on for half my life, I can say that even though these past 4 days have been wretched today is better than yesterday and the day before. Also, I can't say enough how finding a space where people BELIEVE you instead of saying "you're just letting it bother you" or insisting that it will go away has helped me. I sat here reading for hours yesterday and today before posting this and it gives me hope that I can find a way to continue with life instead of sitting and waiting for things to be normal again. Accepting this as normal, maybe? Anything's better than crying on the floor I guess, and the day may come when I don't have to Melatonin my way to sleep.

Yesterday I opened all the windows in my house to let in the "nature sounds", the small relief made me want to cry. Today I went back to work after this ridiculous weekend and the beeps of the copier buttons were torturous. There's also a tinny echo in my right ear that makes masking the ringing difficult. It's only been 4 days and I really don't know how I'm going to manage this, but reading through all the resources here at least let me know I probably can.

Thanks to anyone who read this absurdly long post.

 

Welcome to the forum. Don't panic nor despair and don't project into the future. The future will never be like what you think it will be because you are in the thick of suffering right now so don't trust what the brain is telling you. I made the mistake too thinking too far down the line and I suffered a lot because of that. My ultra high pitch T and severe H turned me into a mess initially but today I live a normal, productive and absolutely enjoyable life. Yes, you can manage and you will. Just take a day at a time and don't project a catastrophic future based on the worst time of suffering. I share with you my success story below with many helpful strategies. Hope they can help you. Take care. God bless.

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...w-i-recovered-from-tinnitus-hyperacusis.3148/

 

Thank you so much @billie48, I read through your post and it's encouraging...especially the advice about reading success stories. Googling the condition the first day or two lead me to really dark places because there's so much despair out there and my first reaction is "omg I feel horrible now, that nightmare they're describing is going to be me too forever", I'm not great with positivity naturally.

Today was a mixed day but I did manage to get my ENT appointment bumped up to Friday due to a cancellation so I'll take the silver lining where I can find it.

 

Check out the thread below where I summarize everything (27 tips) I learned about managing tinnitus after reading the posts on this forum for the past year.
https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...eone-else-who-has-tinnitus.26850/#post-307822