Tinnitus After Car Accident Last December

Hallo everyone,

I wouldn' t have thought 2 months ago that I will join the tinnitus talk club, I surfed on the website since 2 months now, and I have read many of your stories about this horrible disease, some very poignant to read, but because of my horrible English I didn' t dare to post my story, but now here I am.
My name is Genevieve, I'm a french mother of 49 years old and I live in the Netherlands for 16 years now. I have a beautiful daughter of 14 who was unfortunatly with me when the accident happened.
Like every friday evening, I went to pick up my daughter at her dances classes, it was 6pm and it was already dark. I had just started the engine and I was driving after 2 or 3 minutes at about 40 km per hour.
When I' m alone on board and when my phone rings, I never take the call, but when my daughter is with me she likes to play the secretary and answers the phone for me. By day, my daughter always sits in the back seat of the car, and when my phone rings, she can easily take my bag and my phone. But at night when it's dark, she prefers to sit next me.
This particular evening, my phone rang, I asked first to Sophie if she could reached my bag, but when I saw that she couldn't reach it I wanted to help her. But it was too late, a split second after I hit/crashed into a street lamp.
I was in complete shock, I thought, but what's going on? I didn't see it coming because of the dark, I thought we were going to die and I didn' t understand what went wrong. There were deployment of the airbags and we smelled a smoke inside the car, I thought that the car was on fire inside, (I understood later that it was the smoke of the airbags).
We went out of the car as soon as we could, and I asked to my daughter: Are you hurt, are you ok? She said yes, but my daughter told me that I had a bruise on my face. The ambulance came, we were examined, we were not injuried according to the emergemcy and they decided not to take us to the hospital.
My daughter recovered very well and it's my only consolation, because I was feeling so guilty.
I thought everything would be fine, but one week later, I woke up one morning with a slight ringing in my both ears.
I thought first it was an ear infection. But after one week of " singing crickets " I started to panic.
I went first to my doctor and also to an ENT, they said no sign of ear infection. But then I talked about my car accident and then the ENT told me that it could be the airbags. I had 4 hearing test, but there was no sign of hearing loss compared to my hearing test of 2013. The 5th hearing test reaveals a slight hearing loss of 5db at 6000hz, maybe just enought to have this horrible disease. But the 2 ENT told me that when you have a hearing loss due to airbags it's much more important and I would have had a significant hearing loss at 4000hz which was not the case. He said, you must forget the airbag because your daughter was also in the car and she has no hearing loss.
The 2 ent rather thought that I had an emotional trauma of the accident. I have a prescription of cortisone and vasodilator. After 1 week of treatment I woke up one morning and my tinnitus was gone, strangely my tinnitus was gone 3 times in december (the 27th, the 29th and the 31th) and each time because I had been reassured by the ENT.
Unfortunatly since january my tinnitus is permanent. Since the beginning of the symptoms, and the onset of my tinnitus I have had a lot of anxiety, uncontrolable weeping crisis, panic attacks during the night, and I feel so depressed, I blame myself everyday for the stupid accident that I could have avoid easily. The worst part is that I must now sleep with an mp3 white noise and I take sleeping peels. I have consulted an ostheopath for the whiplash, ( according to the MRI no sign of whiplash at all), but the osteopath told me that I have one symptom of the whiplash, and it was the hypersensitivity to light which occured immediatly after the accident. I have 2 sessions of ostheopathie and no improvement at all for the moment. I feel really hopeless, and I begin to fear for the future more and more. I have read a lot about this horrible condition since 2 months, horrible stories about whiplash and airbags, after 3 months they can become permanent.
Forgive me all for this long presentation of my story (and also for my horrible english), but this disease is so scary and difficult to treat that I really needed tonight to share my thoughts with you all. I kiss you all and I think of you and your battle to fight against this horrible awful illness. Big kiss from the Netherlands, Genevieve

 

I'm sorry to hear that. It could have been the airbag that caused it. Just because it didn't affect your daughter doesn't mean it can't have an affect on you.

 

Up to which frequency did they do the rest ? 8khz?

 

Genevieve, welcome to the forum. First of all, your English is fine.
I am so glad that your daughter was not hurt in the accident! It does sound like the airbag deployment may be the root cause. You are seeking help from many specialists and I remain hopeful that someone might be able to help.
Many people experience panic, weeping and depression at the onset of tinnitus. This seems to be the norm. Don't be angry at yourself for the car accident. We all make mistakes.