Hoping I’m on the Right Track

[Shell2211]

Hi everyone,

I've had tinnitus since the beginning of July. I walked past a very loud council grass cutter and panicked and have had tinnitus predominantly in my left ear since. It started off as a very very loud static ringing above my head and then morphed into tones in my ear.

At first I had 3 different sounds that cycled but after about 6 weeks more sounds were added to that. I reacted very badly with panic attacks etc and am only just starting to calm down.

I also had TTTS for a month before this which is now mainly triggered by being in the car. The original sounds have got quieter along side a lot of the others but obviously as with any tinnitus this fluctuates daily. Now that the overall base volume seems to have lowered a bit I now have like a hissing over the top of some of the sounds and also a pulsating wave kind of ssshhhh sshhhh sound across the back of my head (I hate this one).

Sounds change regularly throughout the day and some seem louder than others although almost all every day noises can just about mask them. I have struggled on an evening though where I sometimes get a high pitch whistle in my head over the tv.

I'm so very scared and have no idea if any of this seems positive. I had the quietest day since onset yesterday I've had in a while but slept very badly last night so it seems a bit louder today.

Is it normal to experience so many changing sounds? Has anyone had anything similar?

Any advice would be greatly received please as I just feel like a complete car crash right now

 

[Deamon22]

Hey @Shell2211, my T is very very similar to yours, i have mine also since june. I had a whistling and some screeching in the right ear for the first two months which now luckily has more or less gone. I now have some head buzzing sometimes, which is not loud but such a stupid freqency it seems that i sometimes can more feel it rather than hear it.

But also mine fluctuates, sometimes i get total silence, then it comes back a bit in both ears or does something else. Right now my right ear has just some background sound which is no problem, and the left makes some kind of glassy sound. I hope this is just normal while it´s fading.

Any advice would be greatly received please as I just feel like a complete car crash right now

I got my tinnitus probably from a car crash

 

[Shell2211]

Thank you for your reply @Deamon22 . I get a shattering glass sound as well sometimes. I do also get moments of complete silence or as near to it as you could hope for! I very much hope that for us both this is just all part of things healing and fading. I don't think it helps that I am so impatient with everything! I just can't think that something that changes so much and so often could become permanent. I get a bit of a low whistling sound in my right ear too but I only tend to notice that when my left ear is not being overly loud! Just can't make any sense of this thing it's utterly ridiculous!

 

[Deamon22]

To be honest i don´t think it will ever go away completely, since some damage surely has to be done (whatever the cause was). At least in my case. However, if we stay smart and protect our ears i think at least there is a chance for it to fade back to near silence, and that is more than ok with me.

It is completely normal to be impatient. I would try to relax as much as possible, look into possible relief strategies like physiotherapy, allergies, stretching, diet ecc. Maybe you find something that helps you

 

[Shell2211]

@Deamon22 i just wanted to let you know that a couple of years ago my husband perforated his ear drum by causing pressure with his finger in his ear (he had fluid in there after a shower). He had tinnitus for a couple of weeks and hearing loss that recovered very slowly over the course of a year and a half although he is still VERY hard of hearing in that ear.....no tinnitus now though!

I also know two other ladies one of which woke up with it one day with no known course and had it change sounds very frequently daily until it started to fade out and she woke up with it gone just after 6 months had passed! It hasn't come back and this was quite a few years ago. The other lady is my sons drama teacher who had to have her ear removed the ear canal made double the size and an operation on the little bones in her ear and then her ear sewn back on. She had reactive tinnitus that happened over people talking which she said was very overwhelming but 6 years after her operation it just stopped!

Actually there's also three others all in the army that I know through my husband and all three had tinnitus from being on the ranges and out in Afghan and they all said over the course of a few months it just lessened until it completley went away too. I just think it is very encouraging to hear of these people and even more so for me as I know them.