Tinnitus Increase Has Destroyed Any Ability I Had to Live with It

Might be too lengthy to read, but I posted about what occurred here:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...g-any-response-appreciated.10035/#post-121859

And to sum it up, I've had tinnitus since I was a teen, though minor, and got my main tinnitus at 18 from a music festival where I experienced temp. deafness and got loud tinnitus. Since then (26 now), I was able to cope with it as many things masked it and only in silent areas or at night did I really hear it (and even then, while it was loud, I could sleep with me ear on my pillow and fall asleep with no masking besides a computer running). I had multiple loud noise incidents over the years, but I recovered. I developed Hyerpacusis a bit with in last few years (because of noise exposures) which makes my sensitive to certain things like a plate banging the tile edge would cause me to get a full feeling temp. and make me react as if it was painful.

What ever happened late may/early june, whether the prilosec for 30 days that I got off of right around the T increase, the 4-5 days I took NSAID for knee injury 1 weeks earlier or the loud table saw that went off while I was sleeping with my window open right outside my window on May 25th, my T suddenly got worse on June 4th at night. I'm living in hell and I can't even think about anything other than this T. My ears even feel sore a lot of the times. I can't do anything else or be distracted anymore, because the T is loud enough to hear in the car, out and about ect.. I used to be able to sit in my room with computer noise, light noise and light fan on and it would drown the T....now it doesn't. I used to mainly never really hear it because while semi-loud, it was masked easily by general noise. While my recent hearing tests are great (supposedly, I think if I had testing above 8k limit it would show loss, therefor my tinnitus) I'm completely stuck in rage and anger on how this happened. Were the hair cells barely hanging by thread and finally gave out, or the prilosec, I keep wondering. I'm stuck between constantly hearing my T, putting my hands over my ears to listen to see if its getting worse and struggling to go to bed. It's been almost 3 weeks and at times I literally feel sick to my stomach, can't even feel hungry at times and just feel like I can't go on. I don't know what to do, but no ENT is understanding or helping, I don't know how I can possibly accept this after all the years of coping with what I had. I'm back to square one feeling worse than ever. I don't know what to do....

 

Hi Shasta

that's what happens to me. i had low tinnitus (sounds like yours) and it suddenly got much louder. My story is about adapting to that louder level. I have habituated - i can hear it whenever i want to (clearly hear it in a car, over the hum of anything motors running in my home, etc) but i rarely do notice it and when i do it doesn't affect me emotionally.l You can get there too! The calmer you are about it, the more accepting you can be - not fighting it - you'll both feel better and hasten habituation. I understand that's hard to do. in large part it's a waiting game. Just try to be as patient as you can and keep living fully!

all the best,
Dr Hubbard