Starting 5th Year — Still Alive (but Not Kicking)

[Dive Master]

Hi all! Well well well. Still alive!

rTMS did reduce somehow my tinnitus. It's a kind of soft and sweet white noise around my ear now. Sometimes it's fulling my head and by pressing my skull behind my ear tinnitus, is coming back home. Good dog. Weird. I'll have a new round right after a face to face with my neurologist in 3 months (some US citizens even consult him for debilitating eyes migraines). I have sometime a tiny one on the left eye (the ear injured side).

Now here's the status: waking up after a night or a nap is crappy. Either it fades away within the hour, either it stays for the day, half of the day or a few hours. I still don't know the trigger but alcohol and marijuana really don't help. But I can't help drinking a good old scotch whisky from Skye island each WE.

Each day is now different and I truly don't give a sh*t. F*ck you tinnitus, I kick your *ss.

I still consult a psychiatrist with a light treatment for my depression, not only related to my tinnitus. I still have hard times with concentration, reading, working. Speaking of which, I've been fired, I'm working in IT and I noticed coding is hell now and I can't keep up my knowledge since reading and attending MOOCs courses is very difficult. I'm 46 and considered as a dinosaur in IT (we made the web 1.0, 20 years ago).

How do you deal with work? Have some of you switched career? I'm interested in since I'm considering this option.

That's it!

Take care you all and keep faith !

 

[GregCA]

 

[Dive Master]

Yep

 

[New Guy]

Each day is now different and I truly don't give a sh*t. F*ck you tinnitus, I kick your *ss.

I hope I can get there one day.

 

[dpdx]

You are in France? Oh god I would move to France asap if I could.

 

[RicoS]

Hi all! Well well well. Still alive!

rTMS did reduce somehow my tinnitus. It's a kind of soft and sweet white noise around my ear now. Sometimes it's fulling my head and by pressing my skull behind my ear tinnitus, is coming back home. Good dog. Weird. I'll have a new round right after a face to face with my neurologist in 3 months (some US citizens even consult him for debilitating eyes migraines). I have sometime a tiny one on the left eye (the ear injured side).

Now here's the status: waking up after a night or a nap is crappy. Either it fades away within the hour, either it stays for the day, half of the day or a few hours. I still don't know the trigger but alcohol and marijuana really don't help. But I can't help drinking a good old scotch whisky from Skye island each WE.

Each day is now different and I truly don't give a sh*t. F*ck you tinnitus, I kick your *ss.

I still consult a psychiatrist with a light treatment for my depression, not only related to my tinnitus. I still have hard times with concentration, reading, working. Speaking of which, I've been fired, I'm working in IT and I noticed coding is hell now and I can't keep up my knowledge since reading and attending MOOCs courses is very difficult. I'm 46 and considered as a dinosaur in IT (we made the web 1.0, 20 years ago).

How do you deal with work? Have some of you switched career? I'm interested in since I'm considering this option.

That's it!

Take care you all and keep faith !

I am 45 also in IT. I was a IT manager almost my whole career but I cannot do that with T and anxiety and OCD so I switched to what I like and program in IOS (Swift , Objective C) and Android (Kotlin , Java) and now also Flutter.

But on bad days I cannot learn to much because I wonder of .... on good days I am full of energy ...but that is the trap.... Then you spend to much of it and can start from scratch. I like what I do know and it is totally different from my past jobs but I do not feel like a dinosaur at all.... (But perhaps that is because people think I am just 30 )
I worked all over the world but now just in one place because I do not think I can handle it at the moment to travel because my T will be bad if I drive or fly to much.

My T can be very soft and I feel at the top of the world or it can be loud. But as long as my PT backs off I can get through the day. But again I feel you... I also had a depression which took me out of my job for more than 2 years...It resulted in OCD and bad anxiety on top of T. But I have a family to take care of so quitting is not an option.

I lost all my not T friends completely and made some new friends perhaps for life....which also have T ... I am not the same person I was and not for the better. Without T I would be a better dad. But we need to go on in every way we can. When we get older we do not get better but we must maintain our health as long as we can in any way we can. Throwing everything overboard will only make matters worse so I try to push through.

I said it before on this forum... for 4 or 5 times I wanted to post a succes story but every time when I wanted to do that and T seems far away it came back with a vengeance. So I am careful with it now.....

Regarding work... I like to work more from home (better control regarding T) but they only allow me to work 1 day at home and 4 days at the office. I have bird sounds on very soft in the office and everybody knows about my T. When people knew a lot of people came to me telling me they also have T. Some soft ...some very loud and much worse then me. One person really struggles but never complains ...only to me when she has totally enough of it.

Switching careers is not an option. I am in a place know where I know what I have and I cannot endure the stress to go find another job and having a 1 year contract again. Without T I would have my own IT company .....

 

[MeBeSurfer]

I am 45 also in IT. I was a IT manager almost my whole career but I cannot do that with T and anxiety and OCD so I switched to what I like and program in IOS (Swift , Objective C) and Android (Kotlin , Java) and now also Flutter.

But on bad days I cannot learn to much because I wonder of .... on good days I am full of energy ...but that is the trap.... Then you spend to much of it and can start from scratch. I like what I do know and it is totally different from my past jobs but I do not feel like a dinosaur at all.... (But perhaps that is because people think I am just 30 )
I worked all over the world but now just in one place because I do not think I can handle it at the moment to travel because my T will be bad if I drive or fly to much.

My T can be very soft and I feel at the top of the world or it can be loud. But as long as my PT backs off I can get through the day. But again I feel you... I also had a depression which took me out of my job for more than 2 years...It resulted in OCD and bad anxiety on top of T. But I have a family to take care of so quitting is not an option.

I lost all my not T friends completely and made some new friends perhaps for life....which also have T ... I am not the same person I was and not for the better. Without T I would be a better dad. But we need to go on in every way we can. When we get older we do not get better but we must maintain our health as long as we can in any way we can. Throwing everything overboard will only make matters worse so I try to push through.

I said it before on this forum... for 4 or 5 times I wanted to post a succes story but every time when I wanted to do that and T seems far away it came back with a vengeance. So I am careful with it now.....

Regarding work... I like to work more from home (better control regarding T) but they only allow me to work 1 day at home and 4 days at the office. I have bird sounds on very soft in the office and everybody knows about my T. When people knew a lot of people came to me telling me they also have T. Some soft ...some very loud and much worse then me. One person really struggles but never complains ...only to me when she has totally enough of it.

Switching careers is not an option. I am in a place know where I know what I have and I cannot endure the stress to go find another job and having a 1 year contract again. Without T I would have my own IT company .....

Have you guys looked into masking devices? Or do you have the kind that cannot be masked no matter what? It may help you code/program if you can listen to natural sounds at work like crickets. Just a thought.

 

[Dive Master]

Thanks for your replies. Yes living in France. Masking devices did nothing except annoyance , listening to crickets or waterfalls all day long is simply unbearable to me. I'm not talking about my T around me anymore , It's simply worthless, T = pain in the ear = consult an ENT... Leaving coding is probably not only due to T, maybe mid-life crisis too, I could move to a non-technical position (I hold a MBA, frightening recruiters - "I can't screw this guy" - in southern Europe).

 

[Dive Master]

@New Guy : I moved from suicide attempts to resignation in 4 years... 25 to 30 years left unless fatal disease (cancer etc.) and hoping for a T relief drug in the time lapse (na****m *****b*rbi**l = emergency exit door).

@RicoS : fortunately my children are students now, living in Switzerland, I don't bother my wife and family anymore, just saying now I've a headache when T is loud. I'm not visiting TT as much as before (twice or 3 times a year, looking at science progress if any and posting for my anniversary). Remote working is not developped here (a matter of employers' trust, for freelances taxes are insane), and IT market is bad for the 40+ (I've ever seen a job offer: more than 40 years old, please don't apply). Salaries are very low, fresh graduates are competitive, cheapest and best performing on ever changing technologies (It's just crazy). France has, if I'm correct, the highest unemployment rate amongst senior people in the EU, It's much worse in the IT industry (average working engineers and managers is 30-35). A "no-brainer" job could be suitable to me...