- Jul 30, 2020
- 5
- Tinnitus Since
- July 2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- Someone fired a .223 sniper rifle 1m away from my ear
I am 25 years old today. I want to preface this post by saying I'm so so sorry for everyone going through this. It is such a debilitating condition and I almost killed myself from it, I know how you feel perfectly, and I empathise with every single one of you. I'm not writing this to give long-term sufferers hope that they will recover, I'm writing this so that people who are new to this know there are people out there like me who have had a drastic improvement over the course of a year and to at least hold on to hope for a little while (1-2 years). I didn't want to be one of those people that "recovered and went away", and with all the negativity on this forum, every success story counts.
I'm going to break this down into a timeline, I am going to tell you what I did, what I tried, what worked for me. This is what I felt helped me, and it's my story.
Onset; August 2019: How did I get my hearing loss and tinnitus? I had perfect hearing, then one day I went to my friends farm and he had guns, to which I have never been exposed to before. I had no idea how loud there were. I fired a few rounds of a double barrel shotgun (both barrels at once) and that caused some ringing, I was reckless. But this isn't what "broke the camels back". My friend's brother had a .223 Sniper Rifle sitting on a bench near a BBQ which I was cooking for everyone, he snuck up and fired it. I was barely 1m away from the blast and my left ear was facing the muzzle. THIS is what damaged my hearing, and I have suffered with it's consequences, and still do to some extent.
I was in denial. I had hoped my hearing would recover. What i was left with was a "muted" left ear that felt full all the time. My love for music was gone. I could hear my tinnitus during the day, during conversations, even in the shower. I could not escape it. I learned to sleep without putting my ears on my pillows. I couldn't even cover my good ear because my left ear "took over" and I'd hear the tinnitus anyway. Masking noises with rain, crickets and fire was all that helped.
September 2019: The mental strain was insane. I had become a husk of my former self, and had lost all my friends in the process. My work had taken a huge hit too. I took a month off work and decided to travel around Europe, to clear my head so to speak, to come to terms with it all. I was still in denial and refused to see a doctor or ENT about it. I didn't want it to be "real", to be diagnosed with hearing loss, to wear hearing aids at 24 years old (at the time).
October 2019: I came back from Europe, my hearing loss just as bad. While on the trip, I had suffered from a bad ear infection, and had to take a plane back home, which exacerbated the condition. My tinnitus was absolutely screaming. I couldn't do it anymore, I went to see all sorts of doctors, I was given prednisone, I took MRIs, blood scans, everything. I wanted a solution, a way to minimise this. This is when I took my first audiogram, two-three months after on-set. The audiogram was done on 28/10/2019. See the attached file. I had a significant mid frequency dip at around 1 kHz, which perfectly matched the pitch of my tinnitus. Playing tones at 1 kHz to 2 kHz gave me temporary relief (10-20 seconds, but it was something).
Audiogram before:
December 2019 to May 2020: My hearing loss and tinnitus remained the same. Not one day went by where I did not regret my decision of going to that farm. I became obsessed with it.
* I had earplugs on my key chain at all times.
* I bought a dB sound monitor (word of advice: DO NOT use your phone to monitor sound levels with those shitty apps, they should be illegal. It's dangerous. They are not calibrated to be able to "hear" above a certain threshold of sound and just clip. That 90dB sound your listening to can be in excess of 100dB. Buy a decent sound monitor of eBay, it's only $30 or so for a basic one).
* I bought a ear camera to view and see my eardrum, I popped my eustachian tubes and could see my eardrum expand. That was cool. I cleaned out the wax with a solution of hydrogen peroxide.
* I bought one of the netti pots and flushed my sinuses every week or so.
* I popped my ears all the time.
* Avoided all kinds of loud sounds. I wore noise cancelling headphones all the time, and I'd only wear my headphones over my left ear and play music into it at lower volumes because I couldn't handle listening to different sounds in both ears. To be honest, I think listening to music with one ear is what helped my ear get better, as my brain was receiving only sensory input from that ear. But I can't back this up, this is what worked for me. It's anecdotal.
I had mostly began getting "used" to it by May. I could at least function like I used to and went out and made all sorts of new friends.
June 2020: I didn't recognise an improvement, until one day, I did, my tinnitus tone had whittled down to the point that I could only hear it at night, according to my noise monitor, if ambient sound is <38dB, I can hear my tinnitus. Which is not bad compared to what it used to be! 38dB is the sound of sitting in your car with windows up, engine off in a quiet sub-urban street. I could finally sleep with my ear on my pillow, yes the tinnitus was there, but it wasn't screaming, sometimes it disappeared into a very faint distant whistle. I noticed this change over night almost. There was also the rare night where I my tinnitus was nothing more than a mere hiss, if I didn't know what tinnitus was, I don't think I would've picked it up at all.
July 2020: I woke up and my muffled hearing had returned. I had immediately taken my headphones off and stopped listening to music again. It was fluctuating. When I listened to music, it sounded as if my left ear had it's own heartbeat. I could "feel" my eardrum moving. It was weird. I booked an appointment with an audiologist, I wanted to get it checked out, and the appointment was 1 week out. When I went to the audiologist, my hearing was once again "un-muffled and fine". I took the test. See the attached "Audiogram now", it's almost as if I never went through a hearing loss episode. My left ear had made an improvement I didn't think possible showing excellent hearing/no hearing loss.
Audiogram now:
Where I am now: It still fluctuates, my hearing muffles maybe once every three or four days for a period of 3 hours or so in the morning where I feel a fullness in my left ear. I don't know what it is, but it's getting better, and less frequent, and in time so long as I stay careful, I am confident it will go away, and hopefully, in 5-10 years, we will have treatment available to fix whatever damage the idiot who fired that gun caused. But most importantly, I have habituated to it, even if it DIDN'T go away, I won't let it control my life anymore. I have acknowledged it as a mistake of the past and it's made me stronger in every way possible.
I just want to say to the new people. It DOES get better. I can't promise you it will go away, no one can, and anyone who says so is full of ****. Go out there and live your best life, don't look back at the past too much, I wish I did that a lot less and I could've maybe saved some of my relationships, even if it doesn't go away, you will get used to it. This I can promise.
TLDR; I had debilitating hearing loss and tinnitus which has mostly vanished. My before audiogram was taken two months after acoustic trauma and my after audiogram was taken last month.
I'm going to break this down into a timeline, I am going to tell you what I did, what I tried, what worked for me. This is what I felt helped me, and it's my story.
Onset; August 2019: How did I get my hearing loss and tinnitus? I had perfect hearing, then one day I went to my friends farm and he had guns, to which I have never been exposed to before. I had no idea how loud there were. I fired a few rounds of a double barrel shotgun (both barrels at once) and that caused some ringing, I was reckless. But this isn't what "broke the camels back". My friend's brother had a .223 Sniper Rifle sitting on a bench near a BBQ which I was cooking for everyone, he snuck up and fired it. I was barely 1m away from the blast and my left ear was facing the muzzle. THIS is what damaged my hearing, and I have suffered with it's consequences, and still do to some extent.
I was in denial. I had hoped my hearing would recover. What i was left with was a "muted" left ear that felt full all the time. My love for music was gone. I could hear my tinnitus during the day, during conversations, even in the shower. I could not escape it. I learned to sleep without putting my ears on my pillows. I couldn't even cover my good ear because my left ear "took over" and I'd hear the tinnitus anyway. Masking noises with rain, crickets and fire was all that helped.
September 2019: The mental strain was insane. I had become a husk of my former self, and had lost all my friends in the process. My work had taken a huge hit too. I took a month off work and decided to travel around Europe, to clear my head so to speak, to come to terms with it all. I was still in denial and refused to see a doctor or ENT about it. I didn't want it to be "real", to be diagnosed with hearing loss, to wear hearing aids at 24 years old (at the time).
October 2019: I came back from Europe, my hearing loss just as bad. While on the trip, I had suffered from a bad ear infection, and had to take a plane back home, which exacerbated the condition. My tinnitus was absolutely screaming. I couldn't do it anymore, I went to see all sorts of doctors, I was given prednisone, I took MRIs, blood scans, everything. I wanted a solution, a way to minimise this. This is when I took my first audiogram, two-three months after on-set. The audiogram was done on 28/10/2019. See the attached file. I had a significant mid frequency dip at around 1 kHz, which perfectly matched the pitch of my tinnitus. Playing tones at 1 kHz to 2 kHz gave me temporary relief (10-20 seconds, but it was something).
Audiogram before:
December 2019 to May 2020: My hearing loss and tinnitus remained the same. Not one day went by where I did not regret my decision of going to that farm. I became obsessed with it.
* I had earplugs on my key chain at all times.
* I bought a dB sound monitor (word of advice: DO NOT use your phone to monitor sound levels with those shitty apps, they should be illegal. It's dangerous. They are not calibrated to be able to "hear" above a certain threshold of sound and just clip. That 90dB sound your listening to can be in excess of 100dB. Buy a decent sound monitor of eBay, it's only $30 or so for a basic one).
* I bought a ear camera to view and see my eardrum, I popped my eustachian tubes and could see my eardrum expand. That was cool. I cleaned out the wax with a solution of hydrogen peroxide.
* I bought one of the netti pots and flushed my sinuses every week or so.
* I popped my ears all the time.
* Avoided all kinds of loud sounds. I wore noise cancelling headphones all the time, and I'd only wear my headphones over my left ear and play music into it at lower volumes because I couldn't handle listening to different sounds in both ears. To be honest, I think listening to music with one ear is what helped my ear get better, as my brain was receiving only sensory input from that ear. But I can't back this up, this is what worked for me. It's anecdotal.
I had mostly began getting "used" to it by May. I could at least function like I used to and went out and made all sorts of new friends.
June 2020: I didn't recognise an improvement, until one day, I did, my tinnitus tone had whittled down to the point that I could only hear it at night, according to my noise monitor, if ambient sound is <38dB, I can hear my tinnitus. Which is not bad compared to what it used to be! 38dB is the sound of sitting in your car with windows up, engine off in a quiet sub-urban street. I could finally sleep with my ear on my pillow, yes the tinnitus was there, but it wasn't screaming, sometimes it disappeared into a very faint distant whistle. I noticed this change over night almost. There was also the rare night where I my tinnitus was nothing more than a mere hiss, if I didn't know what tinnitus was, I don't think I would've picked it up at all.
July 2020: I woke up and my muffled hearing had returned. I had immediately taken my headphones off and stopped listening to music again. It was fluctuating. When I listened to music, it sounded as if my left ear had it's own heartbeat. I could "feel" my eardrum moving. It was weird. I booked an appointment with an audiologist, I wanted to get it checked out, and the appointment was 1 week out. When I went to the audiologist, my hearing was once again "un-muffled and fine". I took the test. See the attached "Audiogram now", it's almost as if I never went through a hearing loss episode. My left ear had made an improvement I didn't think possible showing excellent hearing/no hearing loss.
Audiogram now:
Where I am now: It still fluctuates, my hearing muffles maybe once every three or four days for a period of 3 hours or so in the morning where I feel a fullness in my left ear. I don't know what it is, but it's getting better, and less frequent, and in time so long as I stay careful, I am confident it will go away, and hopefully, in 5-10 years, we will have treatment available to fix whatever damage the idiot who fired that gun caused. But most importantly, I have habituated to it, even if it DIDN'T go away, I won't let it control my life anymore. I have acknowledged it as a mistake of the past and it's made me stronger in every way possible.
I just want to say to the new people. It DOES get better. I can't promise you it will go away, no one can, and anyone who says so is full of ****. Go out there and live your best life, don't look back at the past too much, I wish I did that a lot less and I could've maybe saved some of my relationships, even if it doesn't go away, you will get used to it. This I can promise.
TLDR; I had debilitating hearing loss and tinnitus which has mostly vanished. My before audiogram was taken two months after acoustic trauma and my after audiogram was taken last month.
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