Many things bother me about this euthanasia story. One of them is context. Tinnitus was not the cause of Gaby's death. She chose to die because she could not see a solution to her suffering. Not seeing a solution is indicative of depression, not tinnitus. Poor Gaby needed help from a mental health professional instead of an euthanasia doctor. How different her future might've been had she seen one like this man below:
Here is an excerpt from a 2013 PBS special:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/science-july-dec13-tinnitus_11-06/
It was six months earlier that the 66-year-old electrical engineer first awoke to a dissonant clamor in his head. There was a howling sound, a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard sound, "brain zaps" that hurt like a headache and a high frequency "tinkle" noise, like musicians hitting triangles in an orchestra.
Many have since disappeared, but two especially stubborn noises remain. One he describes as monkeys banging on cymbals. Another resembles frying eggs and the hissing of high voltage power lines. He hears those sounds every moment of every day.
De Mong was diagnosed in 2007 with tinnitus, a condition that causes a phantom ringing, buzzing or roaring in the ears, perceived as external noise.
When the sounds first appeared, they did so as if from a void, he said. No loud noise trauma had preceded the tinnitus, as it does for some sufferers — it was suddenly just there. And the noises haunted him, robbed him of sleep and fueled a deep depression. He lost interest in his favorite hobby: tinkering with his '78 Trans Am and his two Corvettes. He stopped going into work.
De Mong visited an ear doctor, who told him he had high frequency hearing loss in both ears. Another doctor at the Stanford Ear, Nose and Throat clinic confirmed it, and suggested hearing aids as a possibility. They helped the hearing, but did nothing for the ringing.
Meanwhile, he scoured the internet for cures. He spent $700 on "miracle drugs" and vitamins marketed for tinnitus. He tried 10 sessions of acupuncture. But his depression and insomnia were getting worse. He had become suicidal.
"I just wanted to go into a cave and either get well or die," he said. [emphasis added]
So in November, at the urging of a therapist and fearful of his own behavior, he checked himself into the nearest emergency room.
"If I had a light switch, and I could have clicked that light switch and been dead, I would have done it," he said. "I would have done it. But suicide is a complicated thing. I didn't have a gun, I didn't have the medicine to do it, I didn't like heights. So how do you take yourself off the planet?"
When relief finally came for De Mong, it was not in the form of a tinnitus specialist or an ear doctor, but a psychiatrist. He was referred to the doctor after several hours of hospital observation.
While he insisted his problem was the ringing, she diagnosed him as depressed and prescribed sleeping pills and an antidepressant, Effexor. Finally, he said, he began to sleep. And slowly, the depression — and along with it, the severity of his tinnitus — began to improve. It's a message he wants others suffering from the condition to know. [emphasis added]
"If you've got ringing in the ears, the first thing you should do is see a psychiatrist," he said. "She saved my life."
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just wanted to point that out. Doesn't mean that it shouldn't be discussed here though. However I have to say that the journalist doesn't seem to have done much homework. I would have expected her to ask more questions about which treatments she has tried, to provide an overview of them and thinking about other sufferers provide a positive note as well. The society is very sensitive towards verbal expressions nowadays, and i dont think she considered that. Also, as Olthuis was a psychotherapist it would be interesting to know whether she had heard about TRT and what her opinion was.
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