Hi everyone. I am going to share a bit about my tinnitus and my life to see if anyone else can help or benefit from my story.
I am about to turn 47. I am a father of two incredible daughters (5 and 8), married to an incredible wife (Sally) and living in an incredible country (Australia). I have a job most people would trade me for (Customer Experience Design Director) at a company that has an incredible amount of empathy for both customers and employees. But I am constantly irritable and much less happy than you would you think I should be.
I don't know exactly when the hissing and whooshing and flubbering started in my right ear. I think it was around the time I visited Morocco in 2009. A couple of years before I had been renovating a house, and if I am honest I did not always wear ear protection. After Morocco, also in 2009, I changed jobs and in 2010 my first daughter was born.
I went to see my GP and then an ENT specialist in 2011, from memory. I had some hearing loss in my right ear and was given some nasal spray to treat a valve at the base of the Eustachian tube the specialist thought was blocked. Some of the flubbering went away but the whooshing stayed.
Like a lot of guys I just put up with it. Most of the time it wasn't a major issue but I did find myself avoiding noisy places like restaurants, bars, dinner events and even some work spaces. I discovered noise cancelling headphones were great and reached for them more and more. But whenever I couldn't avoid being in a space with lots of different noise sources and especially where the volume was greater than the thrum of an idling car engine I found myself being irritable, frustrated and often rude to people.
The hissing started about 4 years ago. I didn't really notice it until I quite drinking alcohol on 1st February 2015. And for the first 6 months or so I had a lot of changes going on with my body and behaviour as I exercised more, changed my diet and lost 20kg, so a bit of hissing didn't seem to mean much. But it persisted.
Not only did it persist but I found noisy environments almost unbearable. If the TV was too loud I had to leave the room. If my two girls were playing I had to leave the room. If the cooking involved lots of pots and pans and chopping I had to leave the room. I found my exile in noise cancelling headphones and a dark bedroom or quiet walk around the neighbourhood.
I also found concentrating at work much harder. I used to be able to really focus on something but the hissing was incredibly distracting and I struggled in meetings.
And then there are the headaches. The space above and behind my right eye is almost always tender at best. There is this fullness, a sense of pressure. At worst, I get a sharp piercing stab of pain like a really thin needle is being slowly inserted through the eye. The frequency of the sharper pain has been increasing over the past year or so. At first I put it down to getting a flu or cold and would numb it with Panadol but deep down I always wondered if it was connected because every symptom is on the right side of my head.
I have had my blood tested many times over the past few years and regularly have my eyes tested. Nothing abnormal comes up. So I finally had my GP refer me to get an MRI, which is scheduled for this coming Tuesday. In a weird way I hope they find something because removing myself from society, including spaces where my kids grow and play, is ruining my relationships at work, with my wife and with my family. I get really snippy when I can't remove myself from the noise, or I shut a part of me off and have been told by work that I lack intent and I am not performing in a leadership role any more.
Finding something in the MRI scan will at least give myself certainty and everyone else the proof they seem to need to accept something is wrong. But I am worried that the scans will be inconclusive and I wonder if there are certain questions I should be asking to ensure the right things are being looked at?
That's all for now. Thanks for listening.
I am about to turn 47. I am a father of two incredible daughters (5 and 8), married to an incredible wife (Sally) and living in an incredible country (Australia). I have a job most people would trade me for (Customer Experience Design Director) at a company that has an incredible amount of empathy for both customers and employees. But I am constantly irritable and much less happy than you would you think I should be.
I don't know exactly when the hissing and whooshing and flubbering started in my right ear. I think it was around the time I visited Morocco in 2009. A couple of years before I had been renovating a house, and if I am honest I did not always wear ear protection. After Morocco, also in 2009, I changed jobs and in 2010 my first daughter was born.
I went to see my GP and then an ENT specialist in 2011, from memory. I had some hearing loss in my right ear and was given some nasal spray to treat a valve at the base of the Eustachian tube the specialist thought was blocked. Some of the flubbering went away but the whooshing stayed.
Like a lot of guys I just put up with it. Most of the time it wasn't a major issue but I did find myself avoiding noisy places like restaurants, bars, dinner events and even some work spaces. I discovered noise cancelling headphones were great and reached for them more and more. But whenever I couldn't avoid being in a space with lots of different noise sources and especially where the volume was greater than the thrum of an idling car engine I found myself being irritable, frustrated and often rude to people.
The hissing started about 4 years ago. I didn't really notice it until I quite drinking alcohol on 1st February 2015. And for the first 6 months or so I had a lot of changes going on with my body and behaviour as I exercised more, changed my diet and lost 20kg, so a bit of hissing didn't seem to mean much. But it persisted.
Not only did it persist but I found noisy environments almost unbearable. If the TV was too loud I had to leave the room. If my two girls were playing I had to leave the room. If the cooking involved lots of pots and pans and chopping I had to leave the room. I found my exile in noise cancelling headphones and a dark bedroom or quiet walk around the neighbourhood.
I also found concentrating at work much harder. I used to be able to really focus on something but the hissing was incredibly distracting and I struggled in meetings.
And then there are the headaches. The space above and behind my right eye is almost always tender at best. There is this fullness, a sense of pressure. At worst, I get a sharp piercing stab of pain like a really thin needle is being slowly inserted through the eye. The frequency of the sharper pain has been increasing over the past year or so. At first I put it down to getting a flu or cold and would numb it with Panadol but deep down I always wondered if it was connected because every symptom is on the right side of my head.
I have had my blood tested many times over the past few years and regularly have my eyes tested. Nothing abnormal comes up. So I finally had my GP refer me to get an MRI, which is scheduled for this coming Tuesday. In a weird way I hope they find something because removing myself from society, including spaces where my kids grow and play, is ruining my relationships at work, with my wife and with my family. I get really snippy when I can't remove myself from the noise, or I shut a part of me off and have been told by work that I lack intent and I am not performing in a leadership role any more.
Finding something in the MRI scan will at least give myself certainty and everyone else the proof they seem to need to accept something is wrong. But I am worried that the scans will be inconclusive and I wonder if there are certain questions I should be asking to ensure the right things are being looked at?
That's all for now. Thanks for listening.
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