26+ Years of Tinnitus, Either from Music, Race Cars, Ear Infection, or All of Them

Hello,

I'm from West Des Moines, Iowa. I'm 55 years old - and I've lived with tinnitus for about 26 years. It started sometime in 1996-1997. I was a drummer starting at age 11. During high school in mid-80s I was part of the punk scene, not only playing, but far too many shows with part of the time at the front of the stage 3 feet from Marshall stacks. I even spent 87-91 crewing for a speed metal band. At one practice they took offense to my falling asleep and proceeded to put a Marshall stack a foot from me and cranked it 'to 11'. I did not wake-up. No joke. Who knows what effect it had. The bass player also had an in for concert tickets which led to things like 3 Metallica 'And Just for All' concerts no further back than the 5th row...

Anyway, 1989-1994 I was a volunteer with the Ruan Des Moines Grand Prix, which put me in close proximity with race cars for a few days each year. In 1993 I joined the Sports Car Club of America doing flagging and some safety, but I also did some crewing, including for a Trans Am team in 96-97. Sometime in that 96-97 window is when things started going bad. One Monday night I'm getting ready for Monday Night Football to come on, the room starts spinning, I head for the bathroom - next thing you know I wake-up with my girlfriend and cat standing over me. I had blacked out and hit my head on the wall on my way down. That evening was spent in the ER, where I was diagnosed with an inner ear infection. Over the course of the next 2-3 months I had regular bouts of vertigo. Luckily only once while driving. I came out the other side with tinnitus in my left ear.

I was lucky for years that my tinnitus could be as mild as sounding like a transistor AM radio, just a bit off-station. Sometimes it is like I'm standing in a forest full of metallic, robot cicadas. At its worst it sounds like a tornado siren. No joke. I've seen mentions of tinnitus disturbing sleep. I am fortunate that I'm out within seconds and virtually nothing can wake me. I did live in Seattle for 3 years and I have to say that I don't recall the ringing being that bad while there... Perhaps the higher relative humidity helped.

The past few months have been concerning due to ringing now starting in my right ear. The thought of possibly going deaf scares me a bit. But I don't let tinnitus get to me. It causes annoyance and gets in the way of certain things, but that is life. No point or progress to be had getting upset about it.

 

Welcome, @Karl T. Amazing you only have mild tinnitus when you stack all that ear abuse up. Reminds me of the days I’d stand by the speaker at gigs and think nothing of it.

Thanks for sharing your story.

 

It took one gig standing near speakers to ruin me.