On that haunting day in November, I went to a wedding reception of my sister's friend, who I've known since childhood. I'm 30 now, and for most of my young adult life, I've always protected my ears at any loud event... whenever I went out to a concert, club, loud bar, even when making a smoothie. I even started plugging up in movie theaters, because over the years, the volume seems to keep increasing (our society is so insane, it's stuck in this dangerous louder is better mentality), and I got tired of asking them to lower it a bit. This was with good ears, so my ears have always been a little more sensitive than other people's, which is why to this day, I'm still so angry at myself. I'll talk more about the regret later. I was in the car, literally had the earplugs in my hand, but put them back, because I thought to myself that this is a sweet gentle girl who's getting married, it won't be ear splitting rave volume. I'm also ashamed to say that I didn't feel like carrying them in my pocket, because I had other things in there... as if it's such a burden! Thinking back I can't believe my logic. Another emotional component is that during my sister's wedding a year earlier (good ears), I had a bad cold, was miserable, and by the time everything was setup, after all the running around, I was exhausted. So while everyone was chatting away / dancing at the reception, I just sat in my chair and observed it all with earplugs in. When people sat next to me to chat, between the noise, earplugs, and congestion, it wasn't that easy to have a conversation. That said, I wanted to be better for this wedding. More fun, more social, just a much better version of who I was at my sister's wedding. So I left the earplugs in the car, and went in, which was the biggest mistake of my life. It just eats away at me, how you can protect your ears for years, make one mistake, and that's it, you're done. How is that anywhere near fair?
There's this strange social conditioning that a lot of us fall into, the freezing, or fight part of fight / flight. Sticking around, because everyone else around you seems to be okay with it, so it probably won't harm you either. I've gone through so many years of personal development, getting past all that BS social conditioning, and just doing what feels right for me. I got good at that... accepting that I'm strange by society's standards, and more or less being a lone wolf who does his own thing. For my entire life, I've been the strange one, the one who doesn't quite fit in, so I used to care about how others perceived me. I thought I got over that, but apparently there's still some remnants left, that old version of myself. Anyway, all was good until the DJ/announcer started announcing the bridesmaids and their partners. It was waaay too loud, and then he started playing music as they walked into the room at ear splitting volume. This was in a country club room too, not outside. Then the bride and groom, the dancing, also piercingly loud. This is painful to rehash, because I know what I should have done... booked to the car as soon as he started, and gotten those damn plugs. Instead I felt frozen, paralyzed, because I was standing right next to one of the bridesmaids, didn't want to miss anything (remember me saying I wanted to be better for this wedding), didn't want to make a scene, which is absolutely insane, since the attention was clearly not focused on me. I also looked around, and nobody else was even flinching, so thought it might be okay. Bridesmaid, me, speaker. There was some distance between me and the speaker, there was one more table closer to it than mine, but still too close, as I've harshly learned. Just a poor setup in that medium sized room, now that I think back to it. I did leave briefly, went to the bathroom, and told myself my ears will adjust to it, noise damage is cumulative (so I thought), this one night won't harm me, I might have some temporary ringing. Part of me also wanted to see how the 'normal' people do it. I'm pretty sure nobody was wearing protection out there; wouldn't it be ironic if the DJ was, and dishing out pain to the rest of us. Again, really stupid logic, crushingly harsh lesson learned. Please don't rub it in, I already feel bad enough about this, as you can tell. I ended up running out to get my plugs halfway through this shindig, but by that time, the damage was already done.
When I woke up the next morning with a huge headache and ringing, I knew something was wrong. I also experienced aural fullness / intermittent pain, which I still constantly have to this day, in varying degrees, based on noise exposure. My mom who has T, and was also at the wedding, told me that hers was a little louder that morning. She's had it since 19 though, and has no noise sensitivity. Between that, and my dad's slowly deteriorating hearing, I shouldn't have risked it, but here I am now. Three days later, I was getting more nervous, but read something about a musician who stood next to a speaker during a show, and his tinnitus faded in a week, so still had hope. You guys know the drill of latching onto something, anything. I also noticed mild-moderate H around the same time, and started freaking out. This was all during the time when I was moving, so dealing with everything at once was very stressful. I found myself plugging up while moving things around, and not knowing what the hell was happening to me. I also regret not having the knowledge to take Prednisone in those early days. I have a negative perception towards western medicine, and have always gone the holistic route, but in this case, I wish I'd known to take steroids, because I might be in better shape today. I've never had noise trauma before, figured it would just heal on its own, and only saw a nurse practitioner about 10 days into it, to get wax removed (no microsuction), and started taking flonase / steroid drops. I saw an ENT shortly after I moved, aced the standard hearing test, and was told I have the hearing of a small child. Flattering, but similar to everyone else's experiences, he couldn't do much for me. He suggested I get checked for TMJ, I think partly because he wanted to point me in some direction, but I told him many times that this is directly from noise trauma. He also suggested that I see a neuro-otologist, which was good advice, but I haven't pursued my journey any further in western medicine, mainly because I have no faith in it to heal this type of damage. So my hearing is still pretty good, as it was before (with the exception of most likely some high frequency loss above 8,000 Hz), but the T adds this weird alien-like dimension, which makes life very uncomfortable. I know you all can relate.
To this day, I still have no idea what's happening to me, and it's terrifying. Am I getting better or worse? Hard to tell, because some days are better, and some are worse. It's truly mystifying. I was driving a few months ago, and my left ear completely unblocked itself. I was sooo happy, but now it's blocked up again. From all the stories I've read, my T & H is intrusive, but people out there have it much more severe, so compared to that it's mild. Still debilitating though. I have T in both ears (although left seems to have worse symptoms of T & H), high frequency / loud noise sensitivity (dishes / glasses clanking, loud voices, coughing, pressurized water, etc), shifting and ever present pressure / fullness / crackling, in varying degrees, depending on how much noise I was exposed to that day. Intermittent pain that comes and goes, which is thankfully quite mild compared to the stabbing / burning sensation I've read about. I experienced some burning in the beginning though, which luckily went away. I also experienced that unnerving heartbeat in ear sensation for a while (mostly right), especially when trying to sleep, but that went away as well. The fluttering was pretty unnerving too, but seems to have gone, and I experience that more rarely now. The pressure / fullness / sensitivity / pain H factors are what get to me most, and without those I'm convinced that I could manage my T without being a nervous wreck, using Julian Cowan Hill's advice of calming the nervous system. I still have to work on that regardless though. Rewatching his videos / internalizing his philosophy of T & H being more the result of a shocked / tweaked central nervous system, instead of physical damage, does give me hope. I've been exposing myself to normal sounds, trying not to fear them, as little earplug use as possible, in an attempt at gradual desensitization. I know, TRT is out there, but I'm also broke, so am trying to heal on my own, from all the knowledge I've acquired in my endless searching. The fact that some of my symptoms have subsided gives me something to hold onto, that in time this could all be a distant nightmare. What really gets to me is that when I do get better (when, not if), I'll have to baby my ears possibly for the rest of my life, and won't be able to enjoy moderately loud music in my car or headphones. But I'm getting ahead of myself, one step at a time.
Deep haunting regret... I should make an entire post on this, because this one is getting lengthy with my rambling. In short, how the hell do you forgive yourself for damaging something so incredibly precious to you, a perfect auditory experience, that doesn't naturally regenerate itself?
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I have been invited to a wedding next weekend from very good friends from my parents.
