Tinnitus, bane of my existence

daveyd

daveyd

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I've had occasional tinnitus for years; it was extremely annoying, but it always subsided after a few minutes. Well, it seems the ringing in my left ear has decided to become permanent as of several days ago.

If I was simply losing my hearing as I'd always assumed this to mean or it only happened during the day, I'm sure I could learn to cope… but I've barely slept at all since (weds?) due to now having an alarm clock in my head with no snooze button.

I suppose this is my punishment for going to concerts with no ear plugs when I was younger (haven't been to one in 15 years ago though). I didn't use headphones / ear buds that much but now I regret ever doing it. Perhaps it even exacerbated by my workplace; it's not as loud as a construction site but I've become painfully aware of how loud it gets when I managed to get through my shift yesterday. I've also been reading about how it might be connected to stress and depression which I've definitely struggled with over the years.

Or maybe I just rolled a one on my constitution save.

I saw a GP on Friday who saw no signs of infection or obvious cause. He's heard there's some treatments with some success at relieving it, but I need to see a specialist. So now I've got an appt. with an ENT doc on Weds. I'm hoping the cleric of ear domain can help me with a powerful heal spell… Or at least a sleep spell.

Perhaps this is TMI but there's probably a valuable lesson in here somewhere: Take care of your ears!

My wife had a bad health scare earlier this year. Since I don't own a car her father drove her to the ER in the middle of the night. I was terrified I'd never see her again. Turns out she had a heart condition, is on beta blockers now and doing much better now. So maybe this is just my turn. 2021 has been a truly awful year for us though I know others have it even worse.

Might not post much here for awhile… I apologize in advance if I do post after a few more days without sleep and it's totally incoherent babble. I've enjoyed chatting about RPGs with you all here, even when we disagreed (i.e., you were wrong :p).

If life were an RPG it'd be a really shitty one. No resurrection, no reloads (or saves for that matter), some players start with much better stats and more gold.
 
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Man, that sucks. My dad was a rifle range instructor for the Marines back before people used any ear protection. He has been almost deaf in both ears for 20 years. He has had mild Tinnitus for a long time but I don't think he has taken any medication for it. I will have to ask him if he has any advice on this.

Get better and you can ramble on here as much as you want. Plenty of other posters drone on all the time :) myself included.
 
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daveyd said:
I've had occasional tinnitus for years; it was extremely annoying, but it always subsided after a few minutes. Well, it seems the ringing in my left ear has decided to become permanent as of several days ago.

If I was simply losing my hearing as I'd always assumed this to mean or it only happened during the day, I'm sure I could learn to cope… but I've barely slept at all since (weds?) due to now having an alarm clock in my head with no snooze button.

I suppose this is my punishment for going to concerts with no ear plugs when I was younger (haven't been to one in 15 years ago though). I didn't use headphones / ear buds that much but now I regret ever doing it. Perhaps it even exacerbated by my workplace; it's not as loud as a construction site but I've become painfully aware of how loud it gets when I managed to get through my shift yesterday. I've also been reading about how it might be connected to stress and depression which I've definitely struggled with over the years.

Or maybe I just rolled a one on my constitution save.

I saw a GP on Friday who saw no signs of infection or obvious cause. He's heard there's some treatments with some success at relieving it, but I need to see a specialist. So now I've got an appt. with an ENT doc on Weds. I'm hoping the cleric of ear domain can help me with a powerful heal spell… Or at least a sleep spell.

Perhaps this is TMI but there's probably a valuable lesson in here somewhere: Take care of your ears!

My wife had a bad health scare earlier this year. Since I don't own a car her father drove her to the ER in the middle of the night. I was terrified I'd never see her again. Turns out she had a heart condition, is on beta blockers now and doing much better now. So maybe this is just my turn. 2021 has been a truly awful year for us though I know others have it even worse.

Might not post much here for awhile… I apologize in advance if I do post after a few more days without sleep and it's totally incoherent babble. I've enjoyed chatting about RPGs with you all here, even when we disagreed (i.e., you were wrong :p).

If life were an RPG it'd be a really shitty one. No resurrection, no reloads (or saves for that matter), some players start with much better stats and more gold.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear that. Hopefully the ENT can figure it out for you. Sometimes they can tell more than general practitioners.

If you're able to get to a specialist hospital, I'd recommend it.

Wishing you all the best.

And yes, just post as much as you want or need.

Maybe @pibbuR; has some advice?
 
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Ouch :( Get better soon!

I know someone (quite young) who had this, also very suddenly. I think it went away after a few days, it seemed very random. Perhaps a temperamental bug in this bad RPG of ours - in which the stats are going down after a while, rather than going up.
 
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Thank you for your post and your advice Daveyd - it is a reminder that we are still human!

I hope that you will be able to find some relief and wish you and your wife all the best.
 
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Thanks guys. The GP said he's heard of several treatments that helped some with tinnitus but he doesn't prescribe them. I read a little bit about an anti-seizure med that has also had some success with tinnitus. There's also an steroid injection (goes right through the ear drum which sounds super pleasant) but if the ENT doc offers it, I'll try it.

Masking is another treatment I've read about; they make hearing aids that basically play white noise in your ear. However, I have been experimenting with playing white and pink noise the past few nights… doesn't really seem to help and possibly just made things worse. My brain seems to think these high pitched tones are so important I must hear them above all else, so I'm skeptical that playing static directly in my ear would be much different.

Cognitive behavorial therapy is another option, i.e., learning to tune it out and ignore it enough to function, but I imagine that'd take quite awhile to help. And I need some sleep nowish. My muscles and joints are so sore I feel like I ran a marathon and hit a brick wall at the end.

As I live in the U$A and am not wealthy I have to also be concerned about healthcare costs. I'm insured and have a bit of savings but it is high deductible. My wife suggested I go to ER, so they could possibly sedate me but I don't think it's that bad yet. Her father brought over some generic Ambien which I will try tonight if I don't fall asleep within a few hours. Not really a great long term solution though from what I gather. That stuff sounds pretty nasty. But I might have no choice.
 
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Sorry to hear 2021 has been so bad for you. Hang in there. Only 25 more days to the new year, and hopefully 2022 will be much better!

I hope the specialist has some answers for you.
 
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May you get some real relief soon, Daveyd. I've had ringing in my ears for over two years now, I can say that, with time, it does seem manageable, at least for sleeping purposes. I suspect I did it to myself first with hundreds of concerts in my youth with no protection, and then spending three years being subjected to non-stop construction at my condo during some of the time I was living in Edmonton. Word to the wise: if a noise seems too loud, it probably is, and you need to protect yourself!
 
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Sorry to hear about your tinnitus. I feel for you.
I have tinnitus for close to 40 years now. For me it is not ringing, but more like a very high noise level that isn't constant. It is in one ear and I have also a hearing loss for that ear (the left). It magically came one day and never left.
If I listen to it it is really annoying, but for some reason I can mentally block it. Don't ask me how, I have absolutely no clue. I am just able to ignore it. So it isn't bothering me as much as it bothers you. For me the biggest downsides are unable to orientate on the direction of sounds (no clue where they are coming from). The loss of hearing in stereo (a 5.1 audio system is wasted on me), the need for a higher audio level than others (to compensate for the noise in my left ear) and conversations in a group. Don't have a clue what the persons to the left of me are saying and people sometimes talk too soft. For me that is the most annoying thing. The only positive thing is that when I sleep on my right side, I don't hear anything anymore and I can sleep when the neighbors have a garden party. Don't even hear the alarm clock.
But I would gladly trade that positive against all the negatives.

I don't pretend to be able to understand what you are going through, as I have always been able to ignore the effects of my tinnitus and thus reducing the impact on my life. I can only imagine what it would be like if I wouldn't be able to do that, which is why I feel for you and really, really hope that you find some way to cope with it and reduce the impact it has on your life.
 
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I've had tinnitus for proably 15 years now? Also just sort of started up - or maybe was there and I suddenly noticed it (the brain's a strange old thing!) Fortunately hasn't affected my sleep (which is shite for other reasons). One thing I would say is that your brain can become quite adept at 'filtering out' the noise (mine sounds like christmas beetles chirping away), but only seems to rise in volume when I pay attention to it. You can train it to shift focus elsewhere, I think there may even be ear/hearing specialists who can help? White noise can be good too - I sometimes sleep with overhead fan on, find the whirring rthymic noise masks it and can lull you to sleep. Good luck and I hope you start feeling better again soon - and yeah, can't wait for this year to be done!
 
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I've said it before, I'll say it again, the human body is a very poorly designed/evolved organism. It seems there is so much that can go wrong and so much that is small beans compared to the rest of the body but still manages to screw you over no matter how small the ailment.

Eye problems, sinus problems, teeth problems, tonsils, brain, heart, lungs, even breaking a freakin' nail is far more painful than it ought to be, or even those tiny flecks of skin that detach themselves at the edge of the fingernails.

It's like every time you get over one thing and have a few weeks of 'nothing wrong' something else just comes knocking. Common colds, cysts, zits, calluses, itches, oh god, it's endless.

And this is before you even begin on things like back problems, cancers, diabetes, STDs, oh christ.

Tinnitus is just exactly another one of those really irritating things, it's just so "oh c'mon, just why goddammit!!!" things that really really needs to be wiped out some day.
 
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Right now it really feels like my brain is torturing me / trying to kill me. If the doc doesn't have a miracle cure, I am hoping that it is just so bad because having it 24/7 is a new experience and I will become habituated soon enough. But right now it is hard to imagine. There's one tone which is constant and another tone which is intermittent and the latter one is the one really driving me crazy.

But as long as I can find a way to sleep again I will be OK. To think a month or two ago I was complaining about not being able to get quite as much sleep as I'd like. But I usually fell asleep so easily until this started. I'd be so happy to get that back now.

Going to do everything I can to get some sleep tonight. We'll see.
 
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I have tinnitus, and I know a few others, including some younger ones in bands and such. For me, like others have said, it was very alarming when it started and I did have trouble sleeping, but my brain did seem to learn to mostly disregard it. Now I only really notice it if I start thinking about it. If I developed it now, I probably would look into CBT and that sort of thing, to see if it could kickstart the adaptation to it. Everyone's different, of course, but at this stage it's a pretty minor annoyance, for me.

Best of luck.
 
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Like a bunch of others have stated, I also have tinnitus. My case seems pretty minor - I originally thought it was cicadas outside until I just never stopped. I rarely notice it now unless I have been wearing headphones during the day - then it always tends to be worse, so just a tip in case that helps you at all. I did go to a hearing doctor where they confirmed I had hearing loss, so that was a bummer, but I guess I should be glad it's not worse. I really hope you figure out a solution for yourself soon! Feel better!
 
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I had white noise and dizzy spells some years ago, eventually diagnosed with fluid in ear canal. I had gromits put in which I think is usually more commonly an operation for children (glue ear?). The dizzy spells disappeared but the intermitent white noise continues, gets worse as the day goes on but I think is nothing compared to true tinnitus as some of you guys describe. Hope you get more comfortable Daveyd.
 
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I think I managed to get some sleep last night. Maybe at least a few hours. Went to bed around 7:30 PM. Took some melatonin, both time release and quick release. When I looked at the time it was 1 something in the morning. Don't think I fell back asleep after that, but falling back to sleep when I wake up was something I could rarely do even when I knew what quiet sounded like. I feel slightly less sore. Still very sensitive to noise, though.

Yesterday I started wearing an ear plug in my left ear. I was thinking I should give the ear some rest and protect it from any loud noise I can. It seems to make me focus on the tones a bit more, which is obviously annoying, but then I noticed when I took it out at night it's quite relieving. So I'm going to try that again today.


Jaguar said:
Like a bunch of others have stated, I also have tinnitus. My case seems pretty minor - I originally thought it was cicadas outside until I just never stopped. I rarely notice it now unless I have been wearing headphones during the day - then it always tends to be worse, so just a tip in case that helps you at all. I did go to a hearing doctor where they confirmed I had hearing loss, so that was a bummer, but I guess I should be glad it's not worse. I really hope you figure out a solution for yourself soon! Feel better!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've vowed to never use headphones again for anything; unless there's actually a therapeutic reason to do so recommended by my ear doc. Well, only a little over 24 hrs until my appointment.
 
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Depends on where you live, and what kind of levels of sound you are forced to hear each day …

For example, in the past, after a concert, my Tinnitus was high for days, or even a few weeks, I don't recall that anymore.

The point is, to reduce the background noise as much as possible. Your next vacation should go right into the middle of "nowhere", for example.

I once did that. I did a vacation far into the countryside.. At first, I suimply couldn't believe it how few I heard. After a few days, my ears seemingly seemed to have become used to that few sounds around me. At night, it was terrible at first : I was hearing absolutely NOTHING ! I was asking my self whether I was crazy or something, because i could not hear a single thing during the night. No car, bo animal, no talk, nothing.

Give your ears time to recuperate. Give them a chance not to listen to ANYTHING for a while. Use things to put into your ears or over your ears from time to time.
Go away from ANY sound once in a while.

Me, I have Tinnitus as well, albeit a rather mild one. When it gets too loud, I hold my hands over them or put a finger into them for a while.

I subjectively believe that this helps, although I'm not a scientist and thus can't be sure.
 
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My ENT doc was nice. Tests confirmed my hearing & ear drums are fine. She recommended getting an MRI but it sounds like if they find anything it'd most likely be a benign cyst & they wouldn't necessarily do anything about it. Otherwise, the sudden onset could likely be due to inflammation of inner ear / auditory nerve & might subside in time.

Alas, no miracle cure but she recommended a supplement (Lipo-Flavonoid) that some patients have found relieved their tinnitus. So I'm going to try that. But even if it does help at all, it would take a few months. So at night I'm going to have to keep experimenting with white noise, take melatonin and drink chamomile tea. :cries:
 
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