My audiologist keeps telling me to use hearing aids he has given me which he has put white noise in, though each time I try them I just start getting annoyed with them and can't concentrate on anything but the white noise. I've asked for them to be altered to produce a higher pitched tone (7100 Hz) but he said they don't go that high. He said if I keep wearing the hearing aids eventually I will learn to not listen to my tinnitus. I told him the problem with that is that as I've had tinnitus since my early 20's and possibly teens I've always kept it under control so to speak and as I got older, I thought it was already as loud as it could get, then it got louder, and then I thought this was very loud and then it got louder again.
Going by how in the appointment he said he can hear his tinnitus now while we are talking (when he concentrates on it) I think his is quiet in comparison and is probably the volume mine used to be 20 years ago (when sounds like the sea used to mask it) but now nothing masks it, it seems like he thinks the volume is just how people describe it and not an actual measure of severity. But I think it is a measure of severity, given that the last time I noticed mine jumped in volume was when I left a manufacturing job with very loud Presses followed shortly by a night out where I spent too long in a club and couldn't hear much for 3 days after we left. Obviously I could be wrong about what he thinks but it does seem that's it.
I just don't get why he thinks I will benefit from white noise which doesn't reach the frequency of my tinnitus but doesn't seem to understand when I told him that I can play a grainy tone at 7100 in normal headphones and get an immediate benefit from it, not just that it cancels out the tinnitus but also give me a sense that pressure in my head is reducing and also my eyes seem to focus more (I believe that my brain is devoting so much resource to making the tinnitus sound and then listening to it that it doesn't have anything left to deal with other functions I used to be able to do normally), which makes me function better.
I also told him (and a previous audiologist) about some over the ear noise cancelling headphones I had been given (Bose QuietComfort 2) and how I tried them with the noise cancelling feature on and had immediate benefit from them as well, but not in that it dealt with the tinnitus, it actually felt like it was normalising pressure either side of my ears, which 'cleared' my head, made my eyes focus better (I have diplopia, I can put one eye in two positions, 'relaxed' is double vision and 'forced' is normal vision, forced is getting harder and harder and I get tired sooner in the day the older I get) and enabled me to concentrate.
He seems so adamant that the hearing aids are the way to go that I got the feeling it wasn't registering what I was saying about the high pitched noise and the noise cancelling, especially as last time I saw him several years ago I told him that sometimes my tinnitus cuts out - it stops completely and for a few seconds I return to normal, I'm tinnitus free until it fades back in again, and he said everyone has moments where they stop listening to their tinnitus, but that's not what I said. I said the tinnitus stops, not that I stop listening to it but he clearly didn't listen to what I said. Now I mentioned the noise cancelling headphones I got the impression he wasn't listening again and it didn't register in his head that I was only using the noise cancelling feature, not listening to anything through them but I was getting immediate benefit from them. So I get the feeling he has this one treatment they do for people, regardless of reported severity, cause or other possibly related symptoms and isn't open to considering that a persons self-help method could possibly be better than the current best thing.
I'm not one for listening to music in headphones so I never thought they'd be an answer to the question I asked him but yesterday I thought to google 'noise cancelling in the ear' saw that in the earbuds can have active noise cancelling in them. I think I just now need to get a pair (cheap as possible but do the job still) and if they do just as well as the Bose ones I'll be able to use them at work without having a length of cable to hide in my clothing and not look like I am listening to music and not concentrating on work.