It's been four and a half months since my hearing loss, which gave me awful tinnitus. In the first few weeks, I was like a zombie. I couldn't eat or sleep, and I cried all the time because of the noise. I couldn't leave my bedroom and the multiple sound therapy videos I surrounded myself with. I needed medication to sleep. I wanted to die. My whole world was music, video games and the solace of my own mind (I have ASD), and all that had been taken from me overnight.
I slowly started to get better as the weeks went on; I stopped needing pills to sleep, started talking to my family again, and even played some video games occasionally. I improved my diet and started eating healthy and taking supplements. I still used masking quite a bit, but sometimes, I was able to get back to sleep if I woke up without it. It felt like by lying on the affected ear, having a low-level masker playing, and concentrating on the tinnitus, I could get it to fade.
All that changed last month. I had a bunch of various symptoms that suggested MS and was back to spending several weeks in fight or flight mode. My MRI was clean, but my symptoms have persisted (my GP now thinks it is a "functional neurological disorder"), and recently, I developed painful throat muscles, chest pressure, and a rattling lung. A new searing high-pitched hissing/cricket noise has spread across my head in the last few days like some kind of disease, even overtaking the low-frequency hum/buzz from the hearing loss. I thought I knew what terrible tinnitus was before, but what I had in December was like a blessing in comparison. I'm totally lost and suicidal again. I can't sleep even with medication. My whole head screams.
My family is tired of hearing about it, but they can't understand what it's like to be utterly unable to have mental comfort. So I've come here where people do understand. Thanks for reading my story.
I slowly started to get better as the weeks went on; I stopped needing pills to sleep, started talking to my family again, and even played some video games occasionally. I improved my diet and started eating healthy and taking supplements. I still used masking quite a bit, but sometimes, I was able to get back to sleep if I woke up without it. It felt like by lying on the affected ear, having a low-level masker playing, and concentrating on the tinnitus, I could get it to fade.
All that changed last month. I had a bunch of various symptoms that suggested MS and was back to spending several weeks in fight or flight mode. My MRI was clean, but my symptoms have persisted (my GP now thinks it is a "functional neurological disorder"), and recently, I developed painful throat muscles, chest pressure, and a rattling lung. A new searing high-pitched hissing/cricket noise has spread across my head in the last few days like some kind of disease, even overtaking the low-frequency hum/buzz from the hearing loss. I thought I knew what terrible tinnitus was before, but what I had in December was like a blessing in comparison. I'm totally lost and suicidal again. I can't sleep even with medication. My whole head screams.
My family is tired of hearing about it, but they can't understand what it's like to be utterly unable to have mental comfort. So I've come here where people do understand. Thanks for reading my story.