Hi, I am Arielle, an almost 40-year-old woman that has lived with tinnitus my whole life. Or at least it feels like it. I have Otosclerosis and it was diagnosed early with severe hearing loss. At the age of 17 I got a Stapedectomy in each ear and my hearing drastically improved. The downside to that was the tinnitus drastically increased. I hear the full spectrum of sounds from static, crickets/cicadas, high frequency ring, low frequency bell tone, clicks, staccato bursts, heartbeat and sometimes even phantom music. I have learned to live with it and don't know what silence sounds like anyway.
I came to this support forum to try to learn more about my tinnitus since I had never thought to research it before. Chalk that up to youth I think. I was told I have this condition that no one can do anything about and to just live with it. Now it is just getting damned annoying and I am finding that what I may be experiencing might be dangerous in the long run.
The tinnitus started changing when I got pregnant 6 years ago into a movement-based heartbeat crashing sound. I didn't think much of it because tinnitus was a way of life for me and pregnancy changed so many other things I chose not to dwell on another sound that I eventually I learned to ignore.
However now it is changing again. My pulsatile tinnitus whooshing heartbeat is still there but it is followed by a 'hooting' noise much like air escaping. I went to the ENT just in case my ear drum was perforated but it was not. He called for a CT, which of course came back clear. Now the hooting has merged with the pulsatile tinnitus and I have a throbbing rubbing noise... rubbing like the sound you hear when you try to slide off a plastic or leather seat. All of this is very movement or compression based.
I need to know what questions to ask to advocate for myself when my ENT tells me to live with it. And, honestly, until now I didn't know that I needed to know that there are other people out there that have also never known true silence. Thanks for sticking with me through this long "intro". I hope to learn from you all and I hope there is someone out there that chooses to respond to this in any way. Be it a virtual high five for living with this mess my whole life or any sort of information/insight into my new sound.
I came to this support forum to try to learn more about my tinnitus since I had never thought to research it before. Chalk that up to youth I think. I was told I have this condition that no one can do anything about and to just live with it. Now it is just getting damned annoying and I am finding that what I may be experiencing might be dangerous in the long run.
The tinnitus started changing when I got pregnant 6 years ago into a movement-based heartbeat crashing sound. I didn't think much of it because tinnitus was a way of life for me and pregnancy changed so many other things I chose not to dwell on another sound that I eventually I learned to ignore.
However now it is changing again. My pulsatile tinnitus whooshing heartbeat is still there but it is followed by a 'hooting' noise much like air escaping. I went to the ENT just in case my ear drum was perforated but it was not. He called for a CT, which of course came back clear. Now the hooting has merged with the pulsatile tinnitus and I have a throbbing rubbing noise... rubbing like the sound you hear when you try to slide off a plastic or leather seat. All of this is very movement or compression based.
I need to know what questions to ask to advocate for myself when my ENT tells me to live with it. And, honestly, until now I didn't know that I needed to know that there are other people out there that have also never known true silence. Thanks for sticking with me through this long "intro". I hope to learn from you all and I hope there is someone out there that chooses to respond to this in any way. Be it a virtual high five for living with this mess my whole life or any sort of information/insight into my new sound.
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