If you rate your tinnitus an 7 or more on a 1-10 scale (10 being suicidal), can you please describe your tinnitus -
How does it sound like (places you hear it/maskability, # of sounds) and probable cause (noise, drugs, head trauma).
Mine:
9+/10
Cause- noise trauma
Characteristic - heard everywhere, masked only by shower, multi-tone jet engine type sound.
Viewing my own condition from a medical point-of-view, I am no longer in the "severe category" (ie. I can go to sleep easily - and stay asleep for the entire night without meds). But, when my tinnitus (besides the one I have had since early childhood) started April, last year, I would describe it not using a rating of 0 to 10, but simply as "catastrophic". Indeed tinnitus has had a catastrophic impact on every single area of my life (and it isn't over yet). And I would not exactly describe myself as a weakling: prior to developing tinnitus last year, I had not had a single day of sickness absence from work for +10 years. Not one - despite having had both eg. Shingles and a Salmonella infection during that period. And I work in a very large office building complex - and basically every one of my colleagues has the "usual" 5-10 sickness day absence rate per year. But tinnitus proved to be more than I could handle...
Tinnitus since childhood. Not loud, but unmaskable, and probably reactive (ie. I can hear it while driving at +200 kph). Does not really bother me since I have always had it. Cause? Don't know - but possibilities are a physical trauma from a low speed car accident my mother had when I was six months old (no childseats back then - or seat belts for that matter) or when my older brother slammed a door in my face when I was about six years old. I did at one point suspect that aminoglycosides medication for a Yersinia infection might have been the culprit, but it seems unlikely that the hospital - which I contacted some 30 years later - would have used them on infants (in that particular case), but my medical records had since been destroyed (so not confirmed). Tympanometry, a jaw evaluation at the dentist, and a scan at the stem cell clinic in Bangkok
independently confirm that there is some kind of problem with the right side of my head/airways - which is where my tinnitus is (but not visible to you and me from the outside). That's why I suspect a blow to the head from a long time a ago... My tinnitus (right side) has two components: a very mild morse code sound that is masked by almost anything - and a second cyclic/rythmic/pulsatile-sound which is not so loud, but unmaskable (except when in the shower). A cicada sound describes it best.
Tinnitus since April, 2013. Catastrophic to begin with. About 6-7 different sounds which would all "compete" with each other - especially when lying in flat position for sleeping. It was beyond human comprehension. The noises (not voices!
) were in my head (and not in the ears). Later on - after much therapy - the 6-7 different sounds were reduced to the main tinnitus tone (which is tonal) and settled down in my left ear (which is the ear I have had three ear infections in and which I treated with topical CIPRO, but with intact eardrum, I believe - in all three cases). It's unclear what happened. I have never been to a single concert in my whole life; I have always been mindful of noise (I have perhaps been to a nightclub 5 times in my whole life, for eg. 30-45 minutes each time). I did develop eye floaters a month prior to developing tinnitus. So-called "micro eye-floaters". Because of these, I started doing "funny" movements with my neck 200 times per day (in order to get the eye floaters to move out of my field of vision when eg. working at a computer). This left me with a sore neck in a strange kind of way. But who knows. The only thing I know for sure is that
tinnitus is tinnitus. Meaning: look forwards, and not towards the past.
I did have ear tubes inserted as a child. For my 6th or 7th visit to the prestigious Acquaklinik, I asked to have (yet) another examination of my eardrum - but this time displayed on a video screen so that I could see for myself. Indeed, the scars from the tubes were still visible some 30 years later, but seem to have healed properly. Persistent ear infections can leave the eardrum with scarring that can result in tinnitus. This type of tinnitus can possibly be treated. Hence the reason for my request. The highly professional (and polite) lady doctor did say something like "we are not used to patients examining themselves..."
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