To Those With Severe Tinnitus

Are you able to watch TV? Are you able to hear what people are saying? Or are they days where your tinnitus is so loud that youre unable to hear any other sound?

 

Sometimes. Sometimes. And yes. It's very loud tonight. I have the tv on to try to distract, but I hear it over the TV.

 

Its like imagine you have a bad/blown speaker and you try to listen to music at normal level - you still hear the music but you also hear a nasty screech along with it.

or imagine a really dirty cassette player head and a shitty cassette (that you recorded off a turntable record), you would hear the music but also a very loud tape his in the background.

 

i can hear my tinnitus very clearly when i'am watching the TV but i can still hear every thing normal , and my T is constant

 

How's yours? Are you able to watch TV? Is there anything else that aggravates it?

Depends on the day for me... Early onset, I couldn't stand to be in the same room as a TV... Phone calls were unbearable... I couldn't hang around my kids without earplugs.

What's your story?

 

I'm with @OddV in being curious about your T, @Jesse Pinkman -- what is your Tinnitus like? How loud does it get?

In my case, while I'm still in the acute stage (I'm on week 6 of having this constant, high pitched tone with pulsatile qualities to it in both ears, mostly left), there are periods of the day when it's so loud, I can't really hear much of anything else. I'm able to pop my ears a bit by yawning, moving my jaw, and that helps the volume a little bit (and moving my jaw generally helps alter volume slightly), which at one point led me to theorize with @engineerLA that I might have Eustachian Tube issues, a theory that hasn't yet really yielded diagnostic supporting evidence. Most of the time, I'd say my Tinnitus is at a 4/10 with routine spikes up to 6/10 or 7/10. It's in those upper spikes that it's louder than the TV for me.

Wishing you peace and tranquility!

 

When really loud and severe i cant hear too much normal noises or speech with my sick ear. T is overwhelming and cannot be masked by any other sound during those times. "this one goes to 11", like the old saying goes.
During the good phase i´d say T is at 7-8 (scale of 1-10). All this thanks to Meniere´s disease.

I hope my 11 is now reached and i dont have to explore new heights anymore. I like this base camp level a lot.

 

I hear the TV perfectly along with my tinnitus. Totally different frequencies for me.

 

15-17 kHz is not covered by anything.
I can hear my T everywhere.
But I can also clearly hear anything else.
No hearing loss in the low frequencies.

Honestly I am wondering if someone says he cannot hear people speaking because of his T.
How loud must that be?

 

I could hear a dry leaf fall on the ground.

 

My T is around 9800 kHz... Does everyone know theirs? @Jesse Pinkman, do you know yours? What methods have you tried to get relief and has anything worked? What caused your T?

 

I have significant hearing loss in the higher frequency range but my T is usually always in left ear only. Occasionally my right ear will chime in. I recently purchase the ReSound Linx hearing devices with mixer sound capability. I must say that when wearing these expensive little devices I feel relief from the constants loud hissing in my ear/ears. I am 9 months into T and not exactly sure what caused it. I had a neck injury years ago, I've had repeated ear infections thru the years also several knee surgeries which all require high doses of antibiotics. I am not sure what exactly caused my onset but it has been the single most difficult thing for me to deal with in my life. Still trying to adjust to this invasive ***** called T.

 

Do you have the same amount of hearing loss in both ears? Or more in the T ear ?

 

@Telis I do have more hearing loss in T ear which is my left ear.

 

I think for that to happen, T would have be in the speech range.

 

Oh ok. Guess that makes sense then. Thx

 

Well... loud. So loud it´s ridiculous to the point i sometimes actually laugh about it.
I have hearing loss in my sick ear, in speech/voice frequency. T is in three-four different tones, the loudest is about 16kHz. "The more you have hearing loss the louder the T feels", said one ENT. makes sense since the masking environmental sounds dont matter anymore = i cant hear them.

My T varies, when it goes up to 11 = that´s it. cant hear almost anything but T with my sick ear.
add ear pain, ear pressure + some other nice factors to that it´s called Menieres Disease, but that´s another story.

an example: a stadium concert in the last August, some 50 meters from the stage i was standing. Kinda loud environment. I wore earplugs to protect what´s left of the good i still have in my ears. the earplugs made it hard to enjoy and concentrate on music because i was mostly hearing a combination of Jet Fighter engine and a Dog Whistle from Hell from my very own head.
This might sound a bit crazy but that´s what my life is like these days.

 

How do you cope with that?
I have problems not jumping out of my skin.
If someone says to me, I should not listen to it, I can only smile.

 

@Kaelon and @OddV
The reason why I didnt mention my own tinnitus in this topic is because its not severe, but rather fairly mild. So it would be off topic. The reason I made the thread was because I wondered some of the aspects with severe tinnitus. But since you asked, Id say my tinnitus varies from 1/10-3/10. For example now I can barely hear it in a silent room when i cover my ears. Ive found out I can partly controll it since my tinnitus main variables seems to be diet and sleep. It seems like sugar and caffiene aggrevates it and I suspect the latter triggered it since I drank alot of red bull days before I got it. My tinnitus is also new (about 4 weeks since it atleast got noticable). I know it says 2011 in my profile, but that was a mistake and I dont know how to edit it...

 

Those who say "dont listen to it" dont know about/have Tinnitus. they might have some mild and hardly recognizable sounds in their ears/brains, which is pretty normal for a human being and is easy to cope with, or habituate to, as often called. It aint tinnitus.
Tinnitus is something else. It sucks your soul out. period.
I call my Meniere´s disease a Soul Reaper. I mean it can get to your very own selfhood and destroy you and make you a passenger in your own life. Make you another person, or annihilate the person in you.

I made a short list to another thread. Some things is have done about this during 2014.
but the answer to your question is: i dont cope. The whole year has been a survival game to the point of almost losing my sanity last summer. i feel a little bit better now.

 

I have just under that freq (14ish kHz) - it permeates the world as an underlying physical sensation. I can hear a person across the room sighing no problem.

Have you tried any GABA affecting meds for it? I've been able to get it to not be quite so penetrating with a valium benzo. It feels like a different type of T than tones.

 

In the beginning, they gave me valium infusions. This lowered the volume to nearly silence.
But this is of course no solution for longer. At the moment, my T is very loud. I sometimes take a benzo (Tavor) just keeping my anxiety under control. Maybe meds like Keppra, Trobalt or AUT00063 help on the long run.

 

Interesting. You got yours from stress and mine from noise trauma, yet the brain has ended up down regulating GABA (or up regulating something else). I'm sure that might mean something to a scientist.

My initial 9 T was lower in tone and so loud I couldn't hear people talk (didn't help it's also completely distracting).

 

gotta ask what are you wondering?

 

@MichaelM
For now I was just wondering if severe T was an intrusive sound that could block out any other sound, or if it was something you just hear along with any other sound even when its loud. Ive gotten some different answers. I guess its a matter of frequnecy. Looks like high pitch Ts doesnt prevent you from hearing other sounds as Dan has one very loud and high pitched and he doesnt have problems hearing stuff around him.

 

Severe means what you make out of it. I have read so often that one can have severe problems with the mildest T. And others with loud don't worry at all.
Be lucky that you hear your T only in a silent room. I can hear mine (sometimes) even in the shower. For me, this is severe.

 

Michael what you said describes it Soul Reaper .think it messes up one life whole lot more ,hey why us with other probs related to T say.Theres T and then there's T .

 

@Jesse Pinkman
T is so versatile a problem.... Wikipedia´s got some good chapters.

I see you are new to this Beast. Being new is good... you have a good chance your´s will fade away. it probably will.
Frankly, if you have "problems" hearing your T you aint got one, mate. it aint chronic yet. It is absolutely normal to hear some hardly recognizable noise every now and then.

that "i hear it in a quiet room" -thing is normal, nothing wrong with it or your ears/brains. or if it comes permanent. it is easy to habituate to, which is a good thing. no one wants to suffer like some of us here do.
when you got T you dont have to search and try to listen to it. just my opinion anyway...

Dont spend too much time thinking about it, try to live as normally as possible, sleep/eat/exercise good. take your stress levels down. Stress can make T worse, i think most of the folks everywhere agree on it.
And dont spend too much time here or anywhere reading about tinnitus and ear problems.
This is a friendly advice. There´s so much more to life than Tinnitus.

 

I need the tv on, for distractions. Normally not, I do need subtitles. On bad days, even if I hear other sounds, they do not make sense at all.

This being said, I also have a moderate hearing loss, and other "ear"-problems. Even with hearing aids on, some days I cannot make out what people are saying to me (includes tv). I´ve come to the conclusion that it depends on what frequencies people are talking. Do that make sense?

 

@Bambi
Yes, I think its a matter of frequency. Welcome to the forum, fellow Norwegian