Hi there!
I'm a newbie here, but I've read the forum for a while and would to thank all of you for being there and doing what you do.
It's a long post, sorry, but I really needed to share my thoughts with somebody.
So... The T. I got mine less than two months ago. A concert. A really loud one. Afterwards I went to my friends' place, we conversed for some time, then I decided to look some stuff up on the internet. BAM! Loud crack in my right ear, immediately after which I noticed the ringing (probably it was there before but I didn't notice it, don't know, the reason for the crack is also unknown to me, btw). It was in both my ears, quite a normal thing after a concert, but this time I went full paranoid about my right ear (I found out about such thing as T some time earlier on Reddit). I was thinking: - Now it's here to stay with you for the rest of your life... - No, it can't be, you're just being hypochondriac. - It is, and you know that. - Go to sleep already, it will be gone tomorrow.
Little did I know.
Next day I got down with a cold, which, by the way, seriously affected my right ear (what a great coincidence, eh?), and I spent the following week home, on medical leave, watching movies and reading. Funny enough, this week I wasn't bothered by the sound. First of all, I'm not sure if it really was there all the time, and even if it was I just said to myself: - It's probably the inflammation. When it's gone, you'll be as good as new.
So, no sleep problems, no anxiety, no depression. I was just a wee bit concerned from time to time.
A week later I was finally fit to work. Again, no anxiety, I barely even noticed anything happening in my ear, besides the fact that it ached a little (which was a normal thing during recovery, as the doctor told me). 'Twas a busy week, I had no time to sit in the office and look for phantom noises in my head, I was always involved in heated discussions, was coming home tired as hell. No problem falling asleep again - when you're this exhausted you just fall down and turn off till next morning. All hell broke loose the following weekend. I kept thinking about that 'whistle' that was supposed to go away with the inflammation. I kept looking for it in my head. I found it. I didn't go.
The next week was a real hell. Now the freaking wheeeeeeeeeestle was everywhere. I couldn't eat, I couldn't think, read or work. I had panic attack at my office, cried in my wife's arms. I hated myself for going to this stupid effing concert. I though my life was over. There was no reason to keep living in such a noisy hell. Suicide thought filled my mind (and I'm a very pro-life person, mind you). I don't know how I survived that.
But somehow I did.
The ENT ran a basic hearing test on me (without the highest frequencies), and it showed that my hearing was perfectly normal. It calmed me down a bit. As for the whistle, he wasn't able to give any definite answer, and supposed it would go away itself.
I turned to my parents for help. They were very supportive, but obviously were not able to heal me
What they suggested was that probably I had had this ringing all along and just never noticed it before the concert. (Easy for you to say, I thought. How's it possible not to notice this siren?) My father told me that in fact, his ears ring in the silence, but he is never bothered by that. Well, not much of a relief, but still better than nothing.
During this period I couldn't fall asleep without a noise generator or a music playing. The T was very loud and intrusive.
Some time later I went to another concert (I know what you might think but I'm not THAT stupid, I'm never ever going to a concert with sound amplification in my life, I guess, but this was a classic music performance, a very good one). My thoughts were that a little bit of soothing classics would do me good. And you know what? I couldn't hear the damn violins over the wailing in my right ear! That was a climax. I nearly collapsed this evening. But a funny thing happened. After this night I regained my ability to fall asleep on my own, in full silence. I don't know how and why, but it just happened.
Time to sum up.
What I have now is a very-very mild T. Many of you would kill to have it as quiet as mine, I think. I don't hear it in the street, in a car, or when playing music. Surprisingly enough, my favorite thing to do now is to sit in my room in SILENCE. It gets better when I'm surrounded by silence, can you believe that?! I feel the worst when I'm in my office. Somehow the sound of five PC's around me, which most of you would consider a proper masking, make me hear my T and react to it.
When I say that my T is so quiet that I only hear it in near silence, please don't think I'm mocking you or boasting. As I read somewhere, the level of distress does not depend on the loudness of T. And I'm very distressed. Even when I don't hear it, I just now that IT'S THERE. I stick fingers in my ears (very wrong, I know, but can't help it) just to make sure that my torturer is here. My only hope is that it would be easier to habituate to it and I still have hopes that maybe it would go away completely, who knows? Or that maybe my parents are right and I had it before, but just exaggerated it by my own reaction?
I stopped being angry at myself for attending that stupid concert. In the end, I would probably have gotten T anyway, maybe just some time later. The reason is: I love music, I went to a lot of concerts in my life (ear protection, whatcha talking about?), I played in a band (loud rehearsals and even louder gigs), used my headphones all the time, and I'm a hypochondriac and prone to depressions. An ideal portrait of a T sufferer, isn't it?
I guess I'm feeling better now. Not sure if the T is getting quieter, or I'm getting used to it. There are still moments when it's loud and I freak out, but sometimes it seems to me like I can hear the blessed silence. Usually, in the mornings.
In the end, maybe it's the work which is the problem, not my ears?
Sorry for the long post again, but I needed to get this off my shoulders.
Thanks!
I'm a newbie here, but I've read the forum for a while and would to thank all of you for being there and doing what you do.
It's a long post, sorry, but I really needed to share my thoughts with somebody.
So... The T. I got mine less than two months ago. A concert. A really loud one. Afterwards I went to my friends' place, we conversed for some time, then I decided to look some stuff up on the internet. BAM! Loud crack in my right ear, immediately after which I noticed the ringing (probably it was there before but I didn't notice it, don't know, the reason for the crack is also unknown to me, btw). It was in both my ears, quite a normal thing after a concert, but this time I went full paranoid about my right ear (I found out about such thing as T some time earlier on Reddit). I was thinking: - Now it's here to stay with you for the rest of your life... - No, it can't be, you're just being hypochondriac. - It is, and you know that. - Go to sleep already, it will be gone tomorrow.
Little did I know.
Next day I got down with a cold, which, by the way, seriously affected my right ear (what a great coincidence, eh?), and I spent the following week home, on medical leave, watching movies and reading. Funny enough, this week I wasn't bothered by the sound. First of all, I'm not sure if it really was there all the time, and even if it was I just said to myself: - It's probably the inflammation. When it's gone, you'll be as good as new.
So, no sleep problems, no anxiety, no depression. I was just a wee bit concerned from time to time.
A week later I was finally fit to work. Again, no anxiety, I barely even noticed anything happening in my ear, besides the fact that it ached a little (which was a normal thing during recovery, as the doctor told me). 'Twas a busy week, I had no time to sit in the office and look for phantom noises in my head, I was always involved in heated discussions, was coming home tired as hell. No problem falling asleep again - when you're this exhausted you just fall down and turn off till next morning. All hell broke loose the following weekend. I kept thinking about that 'whistle' that was supposed to go away with the inflammation. I kept looking for it in my head. I found it. I didn't go.
The next week was a real hell. Now the freaking wheeeeeeeeeestle was everywhere. I couldn't eat, I couldn't think, read or work. I had panic attack at my office, cried in my wife's arms. I hated myself for going to this stupid effing concert. I though my life was over. There was no reason to keep living in such a noisy hell. Suicide thought filled my mind (and I'm a very pro-life person, mind you). I don't know how I survived that.
But somehow I did.
The ENT ran a basic hearing test on me (without the highest frequencies), and it showed that my hearing was perfectly normal. It calmed me down a bit. As for the whistle, he wasn't able to give any definite answer, and supposed it would go away itself.
I turned to my parents for help. They were very supportive, but obviously were not able to heal me
What they suggested was that probably I had had this ringing all along and just never noticed it before the concert. (Easy for you to say, I thought. How's it possible not to notice this siren?) My father told me that in fact, his ears ring in the silence, but he is never bothered by that. Well, not much of a relief, but still better than nothing.During this period I couldn't fall asleep without a noise generator or a music playing. The T was very loud and intrusive.
Some time later I went to another concert (I know what you might think but I'm not THAT stupid, I'm never ever going to a concert with sound amplification in my life, I guess, but this was a classic music performance, a very good one). My thoughts were that a little bit of soothing classics would do me good. And you know what? I couldn't hear the damn violins over the wailing in my right ear! That was a climax. I nearly collapsed this evening. But a funny thing happened. After this night I regained my ability to fall asleep on my own, in full silence. I don't know how and why, but it just happened.
Time to sum up.
What I have now is a very-very mild T. Many of you would kill to have it as quiet as mine, I think. I don't hear it in the street, in a car, or when playing music. Surprisingly enough, my favorite thing to do now is to sit in my room in SILENCE. It gets better when I'm surrounded by silence, can you believe that?! I feel the worst when I'm in my office. Somehow the sound of five PC's around me, which most of you would consider a proper masking, make me hear my T and react to it.
When I say that my T is so quiet that I only hear it in near silence, please don't think I'm mocking you or boasting. As I read somewhere, the level of distress does not depend on the loudness of T. And I'm very distressed. Even when I don't hear it, I just now that IT'S THERE. I stick fingers in my ears (very wrong, I know, but can't help it) just to make sure that my torturer is here. My only hope is that it would be easier to habituate to it and I still have hopes that maybe it would go away completely, who knows? Or that maybe my parents are right and I had it before, but just exaggerated it by my own reaction?
I stopped being angry at myself for attending that stupid concert. In the end, I would probably have gotten T anyway, maybe just some time later. The reason is: I love music, I went to a lot of concerts in my life (ear protection, whatcha talking about?), I played in a band (loud rehearsals and even louder gigs), used my headphones all the time, and I'm a hypochondriac and prone to depressions. An ideal portrait of a T sufferer, isn't it?
I guess I'm feeling better now. Not sure if the T is getting quieter, or I'm getting used to it. There are still moments when it's loud and I freak out, but sometimes it seems to me like I can hear the blessed silence. Usually, in the mornings.
In the end, maybe it's the work which is the problem, not my ears?
Sorry for the long post again, but I needed to get this off my shoulders.
Thanks!
Member
