Tinnitus for 10 Years

I've had tinnitus ever since I was 13. It started all of a sudden one night and hadn't stopped since. What can I remember from that night?

I have a diary entry about that night but I'm too lazy too look for it but anyway- I was lying down with my big box fan on me. I was hollering at my sister. The next day I started to worry and wrote everything down that happened to me in the past 2 weeks... I think I had a cold, and I had hit my head on concrete earlier.

I'm not sure what caused it but each year I would get a new sound. I hear locusts, crickets and the generic high pitch sounds.this week I had a huge spike for the first time ever, I went to the hospital twice, I'm just tired, dreadful and scared. But for the past two days I'd give my tinnitus a 6/10. I don't know why all of a sudden it hasn't been bothering me. I haven't tried any treatments also.

Sorry I'm all over the place- I'm not a literature major. Neuroscience in the winter I'll learn about the brain and hopefully more about tinnitus. That's if I make it, if I don't go mad and end my life.

 

You are saying it's not bothering you, then you say "if I don't go mad and end my life"?

 

I cannot make out, what you are saying...I wish you the best of luck in your journey

 

If it gets worse again

 

I can't make out what I'm saying either but it made me feel better sharing my story, thanks

 

Cicada, or what we also call locust, is what mine sounds like a lot of the time. A combination high-pitched whistle/buzzing that wavers in intensity. In the summer I can never tell if it's my tinnitus or if they're really out and making that noise.

A long time ago I told somebody it sounded like that and they looked at me like I was crazy, so I usually keep that to myself.

I don't dread going to bed, to the contrary, if I'm the least bit tired I'll go to sleep for a while. Not to get away from tinnitus, but due to boredom.

 

I had written this while being distracted and terrified by a cricket noise so if it doesn't make sense, there's the explanation

 

I called the mental health crisis line and told them about my tinnitus, they had no idea what it was.

 

I find it dreadful waking up.

 

I worked in the mental health field for a number of years. Crisis lines are usually manned by volunteers who work in various positions at the local mental health department, group homes, or something of the like. A doctor isn't going to spend his "valuable" time on the phone trying to talk people down from a crisis so it's no surprise they didn't know what you were talking about.

If you're really in a bad state of mind you should either go to the ER or try making an appointment at your local clinic so can get you the help you need. It's nothing to be ashamed of, the shame is if you don't get the help you need and do something drastic out of desperation. Be aware it could take weeks to get in to see a doctor if you try to make an appointment

I went to the doctor last month and got put on Klonopin, or clonazepam, for anxiety issues related to the living situation in my apartment complex. They made me an appointment 6 weeks down the road, and when I didn't get all the papers they sent me filled out to their satisfaction they pushed my appointment back one more week. So in the end it was 7 weeks from the time I called to make an appointment till I got in to see the doctor. By that time the situation had pretty much taken care of itself, but I kept my appointment anyway.

The clonazepam does help me sleep and makes the stress level go down. It doesn't have an affect on my tinnitus at all that I can tell as far as making it better or worse.

 

I haven't taken my clonazipam yet... Hopefully it lessons my T, probably not, probably just anxiety. I went to the hospital twice, the first time there the ER Doctor was skeptical that I wanted to hurt myself because of my tinnitus. Yup.

 

It's the luck of the draw as to what kind of doctor you'll get when going to the ER. I could tell a real horror story about an ER visit and the doctor that saw me. A lot of them are used to people coming in seeking drugs so he might have wrongly pegged you for that or not been sufficiently schooled in the area of tinnitus.

Whether or not clonazepam helps to lessen the effects of your tinnitus, if it brings down your level of anxiety and makes it easier to deal with I'd consider that a benefit. As I previously stated, it doesn't affect mine either way that I can tell, but it does reduce my stress level so it's beneficial as far as I'm concerned.

 

@JodieStephens you have your T for quite a long time already, looing at it from a 10 years perspective how did it affect your life till now? Did you manage to get on with your daily tasks like education, social life, etc. ?

 

There are times that my T would be so terrifying that I wouldn't go to school, but up until a week ago it wasn't that bad.