Alexandra Lehman

Hi. I'm Alex, and I'm currently 16. I've had tinnitus for 8 years now, and it has only gotten worse. In 2016, my left ear started to ring even louder and both ears started leaking yellowish (most likely earwax), water-like fluid. I don't know what causes them to start leaking, but my ears start to tickle inside when they do.

When I was 8, I was blowing my nose one night and both of my ears popped, and thereon afterwards was accompanied with a light ringing. I could also make my ears pound after that? The pounding sounds/feels like when you put drops in your eyes, and you're sort of flinching. It scared me that none of these symptoms might ever go away...and they haven't since. I've been to the ENT multiple times and said there was nothing except a little fluid, was given antibiotics, and sent on my way... Obviously, the antibiotics did not solve my problem.

It's been more difficult getting to sleep at night due to the increased ringing in my left ear. The only time it's masked is when I'm blasting music or in the bathtub. Speaking of music... I absolutely love music, and I am aspiring to become a singer one day. I like to have my headphones on or my earbuds in (preferably headphones because I never liked the idea of having music directly blasted into my ears, anyways...) and have the volume up quite high because I want to hear all the elements of the song so I can really listen to it and appreciate it, fully (..tbh that was redundant lol). Yes, I know this makes it worse, and that makes me very sad... But it's now sort of like fighting fire with fire: I listen to music loudly to mask the ringing, but that only causes the ringing to intensify.

This is driving me insane and I usually just wanna break down and cry because I lost the ability to experience pure silence from thereon out at such a young age...and now I'm most likely gonna have to live with this absolutely insanity-inducing piece of hell until I die. (It's currently 4:06am while I'm typing this, so some things might not make much grammatical sense...)

I JUST WANT PEACE AND QUIET FOR ONCE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 8 YEARS; I WOULD ABSOLUTELY KILL FOR THAT.