Arnie Pye
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Yes, me.
I have "ordinary" tinnitus which I've had for decades. It's a high-pitched whine that never goes away, although it can worsen or get better at random intervals for no reasons I've ever identified. In recent years I had a hearing test which was disturbed by the tinnitus - the audiologist could tell that I was responding to my own tinnitus rather than the sounds she was sending into my ears. She could even tell what frequency my tinnitus was. I actually adapted to this tinnitus quite quickly. It was distressing for a while but since it isn't a noise that belongs in normal life, and nor does it occur during normal speech, I could learn to ignore it quite easily.
A few years ago I developed a new noise - a low pitched drone - and this can occur in normal life and so my hearing was disturbed as a result. It made me suicidal for a few weeks, but thankfully I learned about using water and wind sounds at night to cover up the tinnitus. Once I could sleep again my suicidal feelings went away. I'm still conscious of the low-pitched noise, and it still interferes with my hearing but it no longer has the power to drive me mad.
I also have eustachian tube dysfunction, particularly badly in my right ear. My ear feels full, often it feels as though it is under pressure, it hurts-but-doesn't, if that makes any sense. It is uncomfortable. At its worst I also hear crackles and pops. The treatment for this condition is steroid nasal sprays which I've tried several times. It's almost 100% useless for me. It reduces the crackles and the pops for a few days, but does nothing about any of the other symptoms, and certainly doesn't improve my hearing in that ear.
The pulsatile tinnitus - I have no idea when that first developed. A long time ago, I think. I assumed for many years that everyone could hear their heartbeat, and it would get louder if they did something that raised the speed of it - a few seconds of running, going up flights of stairs. If I get really physically stressed - walking up a hill, for example - my heartbeat gets so loud that it drowns out everything else. But even while sitting in a chair doing nothing physical, I can hear it. It never stops, obviously. Along with all these other issues I can hear myself chew so loudly that I can't hold a conversation during a meal. There have been a couple of occasions when I can hear my own blinking. Edit : And I can hear myself walking - my own footsteps prevent me having conversations too.
I suffer from communicating hydrocephalus. This was discovered by accident about 5 - 6 years ago, and scans showed that it was long-standing, and most likely developed in the womb, during infancy or childhood. I now wonder if it is the cause of some or all of my ear-related problems.
What I really want, in the short term, is my eustachian tube cleaned out. And I wonder whether I will recover any hearing in my right ear if I got it done. But I don't know how to persuade a doctor that this needs to be done.
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