All right, you guys finally got me to post. I made this account a month ago but never posted anything because of the futility of it all. Either this post stirred something up in me, or I'm just really tired and grumpy (probably the latter) and I need you guys to help me out here. It's a long read, but if you think you can help, you need to commit to it
I am a 20 year old male who recently spent 1 month in inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care at a hospital. Heavy medication, individual and group therapy (CBT) did not result in any reduction in my now chronic clinical depression. Suicidal ideation has now persisted for nearly a year since I left college, with the depression predating that by 7 years. I came home to find real solutions to my real problems so that I could work on my depression, but I have come to discover that there is no way my quality of life will ever improve. The only thing I can do is accept that I will never experience a normal life, and will likely only experience happiness in fleeting moments, which is just not worth it.
My tinnitus developed gradually along with hearing loss,visible as a 15db dip in my left ear at 4k (masked) on an audiogram. Loss at that frequency is a hallmark of NIHL, which equals intractable tinnitus. My right ear is fine, -5 max up to 12khz. I am now certain that my tinnitus is from NIHL because even before receiving testing for this, my perception of tinnitus had been worse in the left ear.
Throughout my teenage years - my strategy when it came to dealing with depression, social anxiety, and gradually worsening eyesight was escapism through computer games and music, both of which I wore headphones for. I also have allergies, bruxism, and extreme prolonged stress, but as we all know, tinnitus is glued to hearing loss. Really, tinnitus is almost a guaranteed result of that condition, so over the past month I've rapidly lost what little hope I had remaining as I finished my research on effective treatments for this problem and concluded that there are none.
Relating to the eyes, I had severe sudden onset floaters at the age of 15, the type that's in the premacular bursa, and, I had some of the normal clear strand ones before this, but they never bothered me. My perception of the floaters is not related to anxiety - they are easily visible with almost any type of opthalmic test. The left eye has a prominent "Y" shape that physically looks like a "Y" on scans. This one is the most intrusive, and it has continued to grow relentlessly. The right eye has normal-looking floaters that don't bother me - but scans reveal a "cone" of debris above the right macula - lying in wait for a head trauma to shift them in direct view and ruin vision in that eye too. I quit all sports at this point because, with all the debris flying around, I could no longer track any kind of fast moving objects. I started to give up on life completely at this point. I never got a job, and whenever money came my way I would blow it, because I subconsciously knew that saving for the future was pointless.
My life is a cruel joke. My health is so close to absolute perfection - but for a few microscopic specks of dust touching my retina and a few missing hairs in my cochlea. No one understands why I am so devastated by this because they are such subjective conditions. Making new social connections through therapy, downing pills, and trying to move on with my life simply has not worked, and it has become clear to me now that, with absolute certainy, the quality of my life will never improve without an actual improvement in my symptoms, or an impossible reduction in my expectations. I am not naïve enough to believe that these conditions will ever improve on their own, and I am also not naïve enough to think that habituation is possible for someone like me - it is set in steel that I will continue to deteriorate and wither away at home unless my condition improves. The reason for this is that all of my hobbies are quiet - I love to read, I love soft music, and I love learning. So, it is only fitting that nature would toss two concentration-disintegrating conditions my way. C'est la vie, right? Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
I will never settle for anything less than a measurable reduction in the noise. There has to be something I can actually do. If I could JUST get rid of the noise, I could live with the hearing loss and the eye floaters. I find the lack of research on this incredibly common and devastating affliction to be absolutely insulting on a societal level. Compared to this, the floaters are a total joke. At least I can close my left eye - I can't press the reset button on my auditory cortex. When I play the exact sounds that I hear to other people to try and get them to empathize with me, they run in terror, and I technically have a "mild" form of tinnitus, since mine is purely connected to hearing loss (and my hearing is still technically within the "normal" range). Even my kind, beloved mother, who has pulsatile tinnitus, acknowledges that that condition has absolutely nothing on NIHL tinnitus, because at LEAST hers stops. My parents are supporting me - but I'm growing increasingly certain that it's for nothing. I will stop the noise eventually, one way or another. It will end, or I will end.
I'm a compulsive researcher. Learning is in my nature. Before I went inpatient, I studied every single pill they could possibly give me, and I realized something. They're all sedatives. Benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, antidepressants, they all sedate you (seratonergic medications produce a sense of complacency and "numbness," some people call it the "Zoloft zombie" syndrome). They sedate you to make you relaxed, accepting, and complacent. My problem is, I just can't be complacent with this. I'm a 20 year old man with chronic health problems that will only get worse until I die, severe depression, and little motivation to live. Psychiatry and psychology is effectively useless to me. When I call my therapists, they don't even know what to do anymore. I've been through almost a year of therapy (CBT) and medication regimens now. BCBS-F, my insurance provider, set me up with a nurse to help me with my conditions. This person's only function is to help me find doctors and shell out money to make it better, and she can't help me either.
It's not that I'm contemplating suicide, guys, it's that I'm already dead unless an actual improvement in my symptoms occurs.
So, what do I do?
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