I've posted here a couple times in the last year since my tinnitus became dramatically worse in late 2016. I've been trying to manage it with a sound generating hearing aid, which has definitely helped keep me off the brink, but I've been having some thoughts and making some observations that I thought are worth sharing to see if anybody has the same experience.
I have been on vacation on a small island in the Andaman sea for the last couple weeks. This has meant a lot of swimming, a lot of wet hair and with this more time than I'm used to alone with my tinnitus (because I can't wear my masking aids as much as I usually do).
Hilariously there is a natural masking device here which is the cicadas. Where I live back home in the US we do not have cicadas so it is not a noise I was much familiar with, save for having heard it on maybe a couple vacations pre-tinnitus and not thought about it.
Now I have something I can point people to when explaining my tinnitus because I was they really sound *exactly* like my tinnitus - the frequency, the oscillation and the general sensation of hearing them. My tinnitus is basically a intrusive cicada noise that osciallates to pop up on top of my ordinary hearing once or twice a second.
As I mentioned I've also been swimming a lot here and with that obviously I experience a more total occlusion of my hearing than I'm used to and can very clearly observe the real seed of this tinnitus in my left ear. It's a oscillating, very high (7khz or 8khz probably) sound that drops out once or twice a second. In a prior thread another user had described their tinnitus as being "like electrical misfiring going haywire, going up and down and up and down" which I agreed with and would say is also a good description of the sound that is overwhelming in my left ear when having this total quiet and occlusion underwater.
The reason I am posting all of this is because I feel like these observations give a crystal clear picture of the sensations I have and I am wondering if anybody hears roughly (or exactly) the same thing.
Audiometrically I have great hearing (no loss at all within the range of the extended audiogram, though I know these are not complete) and always wanted to believe (but maybe it's naive/childish) that there is something else beneath this tinnitus, especially given it's oscillating quality (which started up in a single moment late 2016, and has made it 100x more unbearable than it ever had been, and has made this year an especially dark one).
Thank you as always for the support that exists on this forum. Over time I hope the medical establishment becomes less apathetic and more insightful about tinnitus.
I have been on vacation on a small island in the Andaman sea for the last couple weeks. This has meant a lot of swimming, a lot of wet hair and with this more time than I'm used to alone with my tinnitus (because I can't wear my masking aids as much as I usually do).
Hilariously there is a natural masking device here which is the cicadas. Where I live back home in the US we do not have cicadas so it is not a noise I was much familiar with, save for having heard it on maybe a couple vacations pre-tinnitus and not thought about it.
Now I have something I can point people to when explaining my tinnitus because I was they really sound *exactly* like my tinnitus - the frequency, the oscillation and the general sensation of hearing them. My tinnitus is basically a intrusive cicada noise that osciallates to pop up on top of my ordinary hearing once or twice a second.
As I mentioned I've also been swimming a lot here and with that obviously I experience a more total occlusion of my hearing than I'm used to and can very clearly observe the real seed of this tinnitus in my left ear. It's a oscillating, very high (7khz or 8khz probably) sound that drops out once or twice a second. In a prior thread another user had described their tinnitus as being "like electrical misfiring going haywire, going up and down and up and down" which I agreed with and would say is also a good description of the sound that is overwhelming in my left ear when having this total quiet and occlusion underwater.
The reason I am posting all of this is because I feel like these observations give a crystal clear picture of the sensations I have and I am wondering if anybody hears roughly (or exactly) the same thing.
Audiometrically I have great hearing (no loss at all within the range of the extended audiogram, though I know these are not complete) and always wanted to believe (but maybe it's naive/childish) that there is something else beneath this tinnitus, especially given it's oscillating quality (which started up in a single moment late 2016, and has made it 100x more unbearable than it ever had been, and has made this year an especially dark one).
Thank you as always for the support that exists on this forum. Over time I hope the medical establishment becomes less apathetic and more insightful about tinnitus.
Member
it's gotten a bit louder recently than it was before.
