Blast-Induced Tinnitus Since Halloween!

Hello fellow tinnitus friends from across the world,

It took me a while to find the courage to come to this forum and make a formal introduction to the Tinnitus community. At first, I was perplexed; the mere possibility of enduring a permanent condition for the rest of my life is rather daunting --to say the least. Well, I'm glad my perspective has finally changed.

My name is Ryan from Canada, and I've had since Halloween as a result of a firecracker misfire. To keep a long story short, the firecracker (which probably had a db of over 140 at that time) exploded right in front of my eyes and less than a metre away. Almost instantaneously, I felt a variety of different symptoms ranging from the usual pressure in both ears, deafness, static-sounding noises and worst of all, a constant ringing sound in the back of my head. Luckily for me, most of those symptoms went away within weeks, but I guess tinnitus just never had the intention to leave.

I did what probably what most new tinnitus suffers would have done. And that includes: spending nights researching about tinnitus, reading stories of others who endured similar incidents, and of course an informative visit to the ENT in the hopes of developing a possible treatment plan.

I refused to let it affect my life at a greater scale than it needed to be. I'm current university student and I will continue to focus on my studies, enjoy great food and incorporate a consistent workout plan. I know that my Tinnitus is still rather recent, and thus I still bank on the dream that it'll go away, or at least settle to a base level at one segment my life.

And that's my introduction to the community, and I wanted to address a question to the community during my process of habituation.

Do you still enjoy music with headphones? Go to movie theatres? Or even the occasional concerts?

Thanks for reading all of this.

 

Think of noise induced tinnitus as a kind of scar.
Going to concerts and loud music with headphones is like picking on the scar with a knife. It will eventually get really nasty.
However listening to music on low volume and going to the movies with ear protection is fine.

 

Avoid loud noises for some months.
It's not good to throw yourself into louder then normal situations early on.


I never had problems with concerts,movies,headphones etc. I wear protection for concerts and cinema if it's to loud. Never effected my T at all.
Be smart and you can enjoy everything.

 

Hi @Ryan Y and Welcome to TT !

You seem having the right attitude in confronting your T to start with, so I am sure you will be fine soon enough...

Still I would protect my ears as much as possible especially at the beginning as you had an acoustic trauma...

I stopped going to Cinema and concerts for the first year/year and half as I was a bit scared about it, but as I habituated myself I started venturing out again and enjoying such situations, but I always use/carry musician's earplugs with me and I have been fine about it so far...

Best of luck and take care of yourself and your ears !!