October 2011 – 4 years of rehab down the drain
I have had the following priorities with my rehab:
1.To avoid constant ear pain
2.To avoid permanently worsened tinnitus
3.To slowly come back to a normal life.
To understand how much the situation has gone worse during the last weeks I need to explain how the situation was before. I must therefore make a recapitulation from 2007 and forward.
You can say that since 2007 when the problem started I have always had problems in ONLY one of the ears - its a one sided problem. Even from the very beginning have I been very cautious to minimize the risk of the problems getting permanently worse. From the start when things were worst it required a lot of discipline. When I am exposed to sound the constant pain gets worse, my sound tolerance is lowered and I become more sensible of other stimuli like physical activities, and the tinnitus increaes.. Initially I therefore immediately went to bed and rested in silence as soon as I started to feel discomfort in the ear, or the tinnitus got worse. I rested until the pain disappeared and tinnitus went back to its normal level.
It was the same when I had been out walking, or become nervous - the tinnitus and pain would be stronger. It could several ours or even to the next day before the tinnitus was normalized again.So I had to lay in bed during this time.
Anyway, as the years passed the ears could cope with longer periods of sounds or physical activity before the tinnitus went worse, or the pain got significantly worse. I could watch TV and have shorter conversations with only a temporary setback in tinitus and pain. A few ours in a silent room with a book would be all that was required to for the ear to recover fully.
Pushing the limits – stupidity takes over - the Michael Jackson trial
The last months I have been pushing the limits when I've seen American Idol and other programs on TV. I have felt more tired in my ear, but have not experienced any increase of tinnitus during this time. Somehow over the years a feeling of security has been sneaked upon me, the risk of getting permanently worse has been underestimated. I have pushed myself quite hard every now and then and only have been feeling tired in the ear, which has been cured by resting periods.
This, and my own stupidity led to the event that would destroy everything. It was in the end of september when the Michael Jackson murders trials begun. The first step towards my doom was when the judge decided that the trial would be broadcasted on TV. If that would not have happened, I would not be in this situation today.
The trial started the 27th of september. I watched the live feed from CNN on the internet together with other Jackson fans in a live chat. Tuesday the 27th passed with relative ease, and I did not feel any alarm clocks ringing.
The 28th september I started to get really tired in my ears and during the lunch break in Los Angeles I was resting in my room between 21 and 22:30. I still did not feel like I was on thin ice, just temporary tired in my ears.
I belive the reason that I became so tired in my ears was due to the low quality of sound broadcasted from the trial. I believe it was played in 61 kbps. In other words, lower quality than ordinary TV or music. Somehow I ignored this fact and thought that since this trial only happens once in my lifetime I will endure some pain to be able to witness it.
I did not notice any difference in tinnitus during the trials second day. I did however become really tired in my ears. If my tinnitus would have increased significantly I would probably have saved myself from the situation.
When the trials ended at 01:00 I rested until the trials began again the next day at 18:00 Thursday the 29th september. During this day I became tired in the ears very fast and I experienced a phenomena I have never had before. Distinct high frequency beeps emerged in a steady pace in my left ear. I left the room and went to listen in another silent room. There I could not here these beeps, and so I went back to continue to listen to the trials. In hindsight I feel like a complete idiot for doing this - obviously the auditory system signaled it was in distress, but I did not listen.
I was however not alarmed since my tinnitus was still on the same level during the night and the following morning.
Friday the 30th september I used the idea that this was the last day of trials for the week as a motivation to continue to listen despite the ear pains. I believed that I would be able to rest during the weekend and be recovered until monday evening when the trials were to start over again. An instance before the trials were supposed to start I got a call from my 96 years old grandmother. I had not spoken to her for six years due to severe ear problems and could therefore not end the call quickly, even though it fatigued my ears even more. It makes me really angry that I now somehow associate my grandmother with my current horrible situation.
Finally I made an additional stupid mistake. When the trials ended at 24:00, one hour earlier than usual I decided to watch the evening's episode of American IDOL that I had recorded. I justified this by thinking that after I had done this, I had the rest of the weekend to rest. Obviously I did not feel very tired in the ears after the trial, or I was just extremely stupid.
I noticed when I woke up on saturday that I had the worst tinnitus in months, or maybe years. I felt worried about this, and though that I really had to rest during the whole weekend so that I could be back to normal again on monday. Unfortunately I did not get better during the weekend. Despite the alarming increase in tinnitus I never understood that I was in an emergency situation.
Hell breakes loose
Monday the 3rd october I was still tired in my ear, and had now begun to think about if the low quality of the trial audio stream was the cause. I decided therefore not to follow the trials until my ears were recovered. Until thursday the 6th october no major changes happened. I did however notice that the ears started to respond to increased heart rate again, and I started to worry that things would get as bad as it was several years ago. I spent a lot of time reading in my room and during the week, and I remember not worrying about my tinnitus. I did watch another TV program thursday the 6th october and became very tired in the ear afterwards. Friday the 7th october I started to become really worried when I had to spend all day in the silence of my room and still feeling very tired in the ear and having really unpleasant tinnitus.
During this weekend (8th and 9th) I spent more or less all time in silence in my room. At the start of next week I was really concerned especially since my tinnitus seemed to increase dramatically. This was the biggest difference between this situation and normal ear-fatigue; I had higher tinnitus than normal more or less constantly. Normally I only experienced this after a noise injury.
When an additional ten days had passed the situation had not improved,on the contrary it became worse. During the first days of rest the tinnitus was decreased slightly during the nights, to get worse during the days. From friday the 13th october the nights stopped have any positive effect on the tinnitus I did now have tinnitus like after an explosion more or less 24/7. I would approximate the increase of tinnitus to about 100-200 % in my left ear.
It always feels like there has just been an explosion in it. I have never before spent ten days of resting in silence without improving the situation, and especially not making it worse.It's always been the case that the ear and TT has been better when I wake up in the morning, which gives some kind of relief during the night and the early morning. This is no longer the case, it is just going on all the time. I can spend ten hours in bed, and when I get up my ear is completely wasted, and the TT is going on like a locomotive.
One mistake, and everything is destroyed.
Most of all I hate myself for being so stupid that I let the things above destroy my future. I had promised myself that under no circumstances risk anything during my "rehabilitation".
I want to scream what kind of idiot I have been, and beat myself for letting this happen. Every time I wake up the first thing that crosses my mind is: "How could I let this happen?"
But, Instead I do everything I can to sit still in my bed doing nothing. I try to read books and other things to distract myself from seeing the reality. Previously I have always been able to blame someone else, I have only been the victim of bad circumstances and bad luck. But this time I am the one to blame, and it makes me panic. It is enough to live with the consequences without being the one responsible.
Impossible to see beyond the misery – self control does not work.
I am just sitting and crying and shaking, and have no clue about what to do. Everything I do is increasing the problem. When I am writing this message my tinnitus and pain is going up.. It is horrible! I cannot describe how it feels never to get a break, and to know that I have damaged myself and has to suffer for the rest of my life.
Crying does not give me any relief either, as soon as I have stopped crying everything feels as bad as before since nothing has changed. I have no clue what to do, and I no longer have the energy to continue to fool myself that everything is going to be ok. This has hurt me in many ways, both physical and psychological, and it is heartbreaking to think about what I have done. After being so careful for so long, and told people to be quiet and careful its like the biggest mockery of all that I did this myself. I just want to throw up when I think about it, and all my memories from my life before this lands upon me like a ton of bricks.
To be able to move on I need the acute pain and situation in some way moving in the right direction, before that everything just feels worse all the time since you realize that the damage is more severe and that the error you have done is going to cost you more than what you initially believed. Since my situation is depending on resting in silence this was the worst thing that could have happened. I can be in great amounts of pains, just as long as I know that there is an end to it. But now, with this new tinnitus from hell, there is no end in sight. Having destroyed the relative silence I had is a catastrophe, maybe the worst that could have happened, all things considered.---
Finally, regarding the trial. One could think that it could not have been so bad since the trial is mostly one person speaking in a quiet room. It must have been the poor quality of the sound in combination with the exposure time that made it so bad. To think about me sitting there, listening in pain and not putting it to a stop is making me crazy. Nothing else could have done this, since all other programs are maybe one or two hours only.
It feels horrible to think that this would not have happened if this doctor had not murdered Michael Jackson, and that the trial just happened to be when I was good enough to be stupid and take risks. If it had been earlier when I was worse I would never have listened to it. I could never have thought it could end this bad. The small amount of acoustic shocks that has happened previously during the rehabilitation has never led to any permanent increases in tinnitus, so this is obviously much worse.
I can compare this to sitting at a party for 4-5 hours every day with fatigued ears listening to music. I just thought that even with fatigued ears, sounds at low volume could not be harmful, in contradiction from what I had always believed.
It's sickening that my previous situation now suddenly feels like paradise. I'm so angry for not understanding howserious it was to provoke the situation to make it worse. Obviously the previous years of slowly improving made me cut down on the safety thinking.
Oh, well, I do not know what to say more, it is just guilt, pain and anxiety. I do not know what to do, or how somebody could help me in any way. I just wanted to get rid of some of this pain. Usually this feeling of: "I cannot take this anymore" happens a couple of times a day, and I fight them as hard as I can.
When I had a normal life a happening like this was still horrible, but it was still a question of living a normal life with a slight increase in tinnitus , and now it is about if I can manage to live at all. Tinnitus was not as big a problem when I could do sports 10-15 times a week, work, met friends, girlfriend and so on. Then I could also flee from the tinnitus with music, movies and other sounds.
That is why it feels so horrible and sad now. Especially since I made this to myself out of stupidity, not because of someone else, or pure coincidence. This also happened at the occasion when I was able to start doing things again without a permanent change to the worse. It feels like I lost my last chance. I'm so angry since the tinnitus is so aggressive now and pulsating. It does not feel like a monotone sound anymore, but more like a living creature since it is changing character and strength all the time. And it is not possible to do anything without making it worse. Everything leading to this is a trauma played over and over again and again since the consequences seem to be worse all the time the guilt and anxiety is just increasing.
I have tried to find excuses for myself, but I cannot – to much is at stake. I have no guarantees that I will get better, no one knows!
Please remember that this long message above was written in october, 2011 - and is not a reflection of my current situation! If I had knew back then that I would only get worse from that point and on I would probably not have been here today!
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