Tinnitus: Dealing with a Wicked Form of Torture

“Tinnitus is the perception of sound when no actual external noise is present.” American Tinnitus Association

Doesn’t sound all that bad, now does it? This, however, is what tinnitus actually felt like:

An evil spirit snuck into my brain wanting to torment me and decided that zapping my hearing circuitry to unleash a relentless and excruciatingly painful high-pitched noise was the way to do it.

The most wicked aspect of it all was that only I could hear it.

The onset of my perennial tinnitus was abrupt and decisive. It started on January 1, 2017, to be exact. I remember it clearly because of the date and the fact that it followed a noisy New Year’s Eve party.

It was not the first time I’d had tinnitus. I’d woken up to the same shrill noise about a dozen times over my nearly 50 years on this planet and it was always after a loud party, concert, or other such events.

I didn’t give it much mind -at least not that first day. I figured it was just taking a little longer to go away than the couple of hours my previous episodes had lasted.

By the second day, I began to consult the all-knowing Google. I was familiar with the term “tinnitus” but had never read its definition, which, as far as I’m concerned, makes the condition sound silly and made up, more psychosomatic than medical

Most sources reassured me my tinnitus would go away in a matter of days or weeks at most, and that it was most likely nothing to worry about. The message, as the Mayo Clinic website put it, was: “Although bothersome, tinnitus usually isn’t a sign of something serious.”

At least that was my takeaway on that day of superficial Googling.

By the second week, I began to scroll farther down the search results and seriously evaluate what might underlie my tinnitus. I found that, as the ATA explained, tinnitus could be “a symptom associated with an array of other health conditions.”

Here’s a list of such conditions and how each applied to me:

1. Hearing loss ➞ Don’t believe so.
2. Obstructions in the middle ear ➞ Don’t believe so.
3. Head and neck trauma ➞ Negative.
4. Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ)➞ Moderate, but I wear my mouthguard.
5. Sinus pressure and barometric trauma ➞ Nope.
6. Traumatic brain injury ➞ No, fortunately.
7. Ototoxic drugs ➞ None.
8. Other diseases and medical conditions ➞ Hmmm...

Item #8 had its own sublist:

• Autoimmune disorders ➞ Not that I know of.
• Blood vessel disorders ➞ No.
• Psychiatric disorders ➞ Check.
• Vestibular disorders ➞Negative.
• Tumor-related disorders (very rarely), such as Acoustic Neuroma and Vestibular Schwannoma ➞ Fervently hope not.

TMJ and successfully treated depression were the two conditions I definitely had. I could rule out most of the others based on my medical history and yearly physical.

There had to be something for Pete’s sake! At this point, I was starting to get desperate. The noise was driving me I-N-S-A-N-E.

So I made an appointment with my primary care physician (PCP), who found nothing amiss but recommended I see the TMJ specialist and an ENT (ear, nose and throat) doctor.

After examining me, reviewing my case and history, and ruling out hearing loss, my local ENT basically said there was no discernible cause for my tinnitus, that it would probably go away -in time. In the meantime, he suggested, try to ignore it or use background sounds to counter the high-pitched ringing.

Ignore it? Give me a freakin’ break! How can anyone ignore this assault on the senses? Easy for him to say. He can’t f*cking hear it! There must be something more. A rare frightful condition must be causing my tinnitus. I gotta go to a real specialist.

And so I went to see a tinnitus specialist at Yale, in New Haven, over an hour away. He, too, found nothing wrong and confirmed what I’d read on the ATA’s website, that “There is currently no scientifically-validated cure for most types of tinnitus.”

It was the TMJ specialist who showed the most concern for my plight. By the time I went to see him, I must have looked and sounded hugely distraught.

He recommended an MRI of my brain. I was relieved since I didn’t think the possibility of a tumor was as remote as the previous doctors had said. This horrible torture couldn’t just be nothing.

You guessed: It was nothing. I was almost disappointed.

The TMJ specialist was the last doctor I consulted about my tinnitus.

Over the next few weeks, I fell into deep anguish, wondering how I’d live every second of the rest of my life hearing this monotonous, piercing beeeeeeeeeep, akin to the sound of a heart monitor when the patient flatlines, except a thousand times more shrill.

Accepting there was no ultimate solution, I turned to the how-to-manage-tinnitus advice. Here are potential areas to target to mitigate the effects of tinnitus, according to the ATA:

1. General wellness
2. Hearing aids
3. Sound therapies
4. Behavioral therapies
5. Drug therapies
6. TMJ treatments
7. Experimental therapies

I focused on #3, -sound therapies- because it was the immediately applicable option for me. I viewed behavioral therapies (item #4) as a back-up since such an option would require a great deal of time and financial commitment.

As to the other areas, not to brag, but my diet and exercise habits are good; I don’t have hearing loss (yet) so hearing aids wouldn’t help me; I already take SSRIs for my depression; and my TMJ is under control.  Experimental therapies, well, I just didn’t want to go there.

Through sound therapies “patients can use real, external noise to counteract their perception and reaction to tinnitus.”

Again, doesn’t it all sound as if one’s making the affliction all up? On the one hand, the tinnitus sound doesn’t actually exist, and, on the other, real sounds can cancel out the imaginary one!