Tinnitus for 7 Months Now

My name is Jeff, I'm 17 and I've decided to let the world know how I'm dealing with my Tinnitus.

As a formention I would like to say that I have a history of loud music and playing video games 24/7 with a headset on. For 6 years in a row every day I would sit at my computer until the early morning listening to music and playing games on full blast with complete disregard for the health of my ears. I'm not 100% sure that this hasn't contributed to my T. I've switched to speakers and to all of my Skype contacts displeasure I have not experienced any worsening in my condition and I'm quite happy using speakers now.

Onto the real story.

Last year at the end of December I had started noticing a slight ringing in both of my ears that, throughout the week had grown in volume. After a few days I had to tell my mom and she said we would schedule an appointment at the Clinic when we returned from our vacation in the Colorado mountains (which is beautiful) a few days from then. On the third day in Copper Mountain (after trying home remedies like liquid solutions and smoke and making sure there were wasn't ear wax causing the problem) I had to go to the ER because I hadn't sleep in two days and I was crying constantly any time I was alone. When my sister walked in on me crying she had told my parents and we drove to the nearest hospital.

The doctor on call had diagnosed me having an infection of the inner ear as well as both of my ear drums being perforated, which is odd because I had no pain or hearing loss and I'll address this later in the next paragraph, and prescribed me an antibiotic that I can't be 100% sure on what it was but I'm fairly certain it was Amoxicillin. So with the prescription given to me the fluid in my ears started to drain and everything started feeling better, no more pressure and no more dizziness. But I could still hear the ringing. The ringing never went away, it never faltered, it never got louder, and its never changed in pitch.

A week after we returned I had gone to a ENT clinic where the primary doctor there had done a check up seeing that my infection was gone and that my ear drums were in fact completely intact but some scarring. He wanted me to have a hearing test done and I passed completely just proving that I have no hearing loss, so that's good.
I've had an MRI done to check for tumors and that turned up clean and I've been back to the same ENT three times with my fourth appointment coming up in a month or two with no changes. When I asked my doctor why this happened he said to me "Well sometimes it just happens." in a very casual way and then walked away. I've never been so pissed in my life at someone who's supposed to be a professional at his job. I'm an emotionally unstable person and when he told me that I went home and cried. I've cried a lot because my situation has not improved and it doesn't look like it will either.

What I've done to cope with the situation is continue on with my life and to always have music playing but recently I've noticed myself drowning out the noise on my own without music or some sort of audio playing in the background of my life. Sleeping is still hard to do without music but recently I've started turning it lower than I used to and its been easier to sleep. I tend to bottle my emotions up and when I feel like I can't contain them anymore sometimes I will break down and cry once a month or two to release stress. Exercising has helped me maintain my life and to stay strong and keep moving forward. I've recently learned how to drive and that currently takes up a lot of my time driving my parents around their errands.
I've also met a fantastic girl who understands my situation and helps me out when I get frustrated and tolerates my need for a lack of silence.

Feel free to ask any questions and I will try to help anyone if they need it and maybe I can even learn a few coping techniques?

Thanks and good luck,
Jeff

 

Hey Jeff, like you I am new to tinnitustalk.com

First and foremost, as a sufferer when I turned 22 years old in 2008, I have been in your spot. A little about myself; unlike from what you mentioned about your daily habits and exposure to sound, I always took care of my ears and seldom listened to loud music. However, just 1 night, when I went to a club with my friends and had alcohol and stood by a speaker for 1-2 hours, I had tinnitus. My symptoms were:

1) Aural fullness, something that made my ears have pressure which I constantly had to pop and a background noise of humming + a vibration

2) Loud ringing in both ears, very high pitched that for the first 3 nights I couldn't sleep. It was constant and like a shrill or shrieking noise, definitely this sound was the worst thing I felt.

To tell you the truth, I went to a general practitioner and he literally said "Well, you're going to have to live with this.' I was devastated. Despite this, it could just be a personal trait or something, but I still clung on to HOPE. So this is what I'm going to tell you:

Instead of sulking, I did my best everyday without fail to try to change my mentality and be positive BUT ALSO not look for the tinnitus and check to see if it was there. I literally had to force myself to meditate with my ears screaming for 10 minutes a day, while deep breathing so that I could learn to control my anxiety.

I didn't stop there. Aside from doing research and so forth, I read that since I was young and only 22, it would make sense that my body should be able to heal with time. I also talked to another GP who mentioned my youth was on my side and also it would take 6 months to a 1 year for my ears to heal (and hopefully reduce the tinnitus volume). So aside from changing my mentality and incorporating relaxation and meditation, I wanted to maximize the ability for my body to be healthy so it could heal properly.

1) I ran 3 miles everyday without fail
2) I watched my diet. I forced myself to eat salads, lowered my sodium (salt) intake, drank a lot of water, stayed clear from caffeine and stimulants and even bought all fruit smoothies or cold pressed juice just to make sure I had the proper amount of vitamins and minerals.
3) I worked out. My reasoning for working out + running was simple. I wanted better blood flow to my ears, so that my ears were properly perfused (basically, you want blood to oxygenate your tissues).
4) I also told myself while I was running that I WOULD NOT LET TINNITUS CONTROL AND DICTATE MY LIFE and remained POSITIVE that something would change.

What I can tell you this: as the months progressed, the severity of volume and duration of my tinnitus began to decrease a lot. By July of 2009, roughly 1 year after my first time hearing tinnitus, it was 90% lower in volume, and became intermittent (it would come and go). From 2010-2016 it would flare up for about 20 minutes a day, and I would forget about it very quickly.



As of the last two weeks my tinnitus did come back recently to my right ear. Not loud, and it is intermittent.. It's probably because I was tired, I had poor sleeping habits and I'm currently stressed out studying for my Board exams for nursing. DESPITE THIS minor setback, I am fighting tinnitus by doing what I mentioned above starting the day I heard my tinnitus return. That means I stay away from caffeine, eat Subway sandwiches with no salt added or cheese and ask for extra vegetables like spinach, bell peppers, cucumber and olives and also eating more fruits and staying away from fast food.

Within this past week, I have also purchased the German grade Ginkgo Biloba and a Zinc supplement, since articles I have read have mentioned they might be effective for some people.



Hang in there and best of luck to you. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

 

Welcome to the forum for the both of you. It is nice to hear positive updates like the both of you have posted. Keep up the positive attitude and engage in life positively. This will help to minimize T even more. Positivity can only help our journey with T. Congrats and hope that these posts are in the success stories section of TT as you folks include so many good points to help out the new T sufferers. These posts give hope and can help the struggling readers to calm down. Perhaps @Markku or other admins will give it a thought. Thanks again for taking the time to post your positive stories.

 

Thanks for the welcomes, glad to be a part of something that can help people deal with this.

 

@Mario martz @heartohelp 's post, above.