A Fire Alarm Triggered My Tinnitus, Sound Sensitivity and TTTS

[kyblue]

Hi all,

I was blasted twice in the same night by a faulty fire alarm in the house that went off at midnight and again at 3 AM on December 27th. I am 50 years old. I was half asleep trying to press a button to turn it off, with kids crying out in fright. I've had this happen a few times in prior years, but it never hurt my ears in this way.

I am now recovering from this acoustic trauma as best I can, but some days are really bad. I had a hearing test after two months; it showed some hearing damage at 4 kHz. For the first two months I heard all sorts of noises in my ears going on at the same time: crickets low, high pitched static etc. But it has now settled down to usually a high tone with some modulation. The intensity can vary.

I started to journal my days and found this site, and many thanks to @Michael Leigh for his generous contributions. Let me ask him here: I'm now in month three and wondering if I will ever be able to go out to a casual restaurant again for dinner without earplugs? Is that success story out there?

I have had a couple of days (two weeks ago) where the sound went down to a 2, but it is generally always pitched higher like 5 or 6 — intrusive throughout my everyday activity. I'm working on habituation and I use sound therapy at night (crickets or rain with in room speaker) played just below my tinnitus level.

I have not had a good night's sleep since this began and am starting medicine to help bridge me to health. At month one, as the sleep deprivation wore me down, I developed constant tonic tensor tympani syndrome (TTTS) and an eye twitch. The eye twitch is slight but frequent, like I used to get when going for a time with poor sleep. Also during the first month, but not immediately, I developed sensitivity to everyday sounds like dishes and running water. At month three, that has improved somewhat. In month two, the TTTS and sleep issues led, I believe, to an irritation of the trigeminal nerve and I started to get facial tingling at night.

When I finally put three nights of sleep together a week ago (3-5 hours is progress!) with the help of a sleep aid I recently started, the facial tingling subsided and I hope the TTTS will soon follow. It is a real aggravation, especially at night, because it can disrupt my sleep — a vicious cycle.

As I go through this journey I will share anything I find helpful. I appreciate this community — the success stories offer me hope!

 

[AliasM]

Hi kyblue, sorry to hear about your experience with the fire alarm. How one small event can change your life. I need a sedative to sleep these days. Maybe the doctor can prescribe you something.

I am completely paranoid about fire alarms. It is law where I am to have them all connected to each other and wired into the mains. This means if one goes off, they ALL go off. Older style were just battery operated and only the one would initially go off, unless there is a massive fire of course.

My father was cooking and burned the food a few weeks ago and I completely lost it. I ran around putting my foam plugs in mjne and the kids' ears. There are nine fire alarms in my house. You only need to set one off and they all go. I want them disconnected, but my husband says no.

 

[Dirtworks]

My fear exactly. Wind slamming door caused my last spike after waiting 4 months for the previous to settle. Juicer/blender, plates coming together, smoke detectors, dogs with high bark and then there is all the power tools which I used to make my living.

Do they make hearing aids with a sound limiting feature? Anybody?