Comment by A_D_E_P_T
14 hours ago
Yeah, that's nice and all, but people suffering from tinnitus will tend to get downright angry when you tell them: "Just change your attitude to it." There's nobody with tinnitus who hasn't heard it 100x already. And it's not that easy.
It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
And time does help, at least sometimes. Over the past ten years, my tinnitus has gone from a 5/10 (highly annoying and noticeable above ambient noise, but not debilitating in any respect,) to something like a 1/10 (I don't even hear it unless I'm in an extremely quiet room and trying to sleep).
...But it sure ain't my friend, and never will be. It's hard to interpret it as anything but an annoying side-effect of self-inflicted nerve damage.
I've had it all my life. I'm 55. Mine is bearable and generally I don't notice it. Mine was caused by "glue ear" or more likely the operations to "cure it", which caused ear drum scarring and what not. I don't think that glue ear is a modern diagnosis anymore. Mind you doctors were only beginning to not advise people to smoke for their health in the early '70s.
I know what a variety of tinnitus is like (I've never known anything else) and I'm sure that other varieties can be horrendous. In my case time does not help.
Perhaps we ought to insist on a tinnitus spectrum, with multiple dimensions and some TLAs. I don't think that advice from a single data point is very helpful, or being charitable: annecdata. I'm glad it disappeared for OP.
Tinnitus ranges from, say, me (I'll live) through yourself (fuck! but I'll live) to committing suicide in despair at the extreme end.
Wow, I’ve had it for 15 years and until now I’ve never thought it may be connected to also being «treated» for glue ear as a kid. Do you have more info on this and how you came to that conclusion?
(I see you use another quoting style, so I'll try to keep my language to the point) I only heard about the term tinnitus as a 'teen or perhaps later.
ENT: Ear, Nose and Throat - a medical specialism.
My earliest memories are from around 18 months. I used to have very bad earache whenever I had a cold or influenza. My mother told me that I used to burst into tears, unprovoked or without any of the usual baby related reasons and eventually around age five or six I was diagnosed with "glue ear".
The way it was explained to me was: my eustacian tubes were too narrow. Speaking to children: "Your ears, nose and throat are all linked together and the tubes that link your ears to the rest of you are too small and get blocked easily".
I had surgery to insert "grommets" into my eustacian tubes. This was done twice. Grommets are tiny plastic, hollow tubes. From memory: about 3mm long and 3mm outer diameter but that is from a long time ago.
Now here is where it gets complicated! My dad was in the British army (so was my mum but that's another story). This means we moved house every two years or so. I can fix dates quite well.
The first operation was performed in Rinteln, West Germany at a British Forces hospital. We were stationed in Paderborn so it would be around 1976. I had a second set inserted in Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester (UK) in 1977 or perhaps early 1978.
I know that the second set of grommets were removed by a doctor (I think an ENT specialist) but I can't remember if the first set were removed in Manchester and replaced by the second pair at the same time.
I recall that the doctor used a black, plastic, bell shaped thing that fitted over my ear and wiggled some sort of hooked, metal probe within my ear to pull out the grommets. It was quite painful.
Even after the operations, I still got earache whenever I had a cold up until around age 20-25. That age range is a bit hard to pin down. I'll also note that when we were stationed in Cyprus in 1986-7ish, a lot of swimming and diving helped clear the tubes!
One of the nasty side effects of glue ear is that you have trouble with pressure changes. Airliners and swimming are the bane of your life.
There are some notes. Hope it helps.
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> It's unfortunate and surprising that there's still no effective drug, though lidocaine does, in fact, work. (Very temporarily, sadly.)
There's some research, but yeah, I'm surprised that something that affects so many people and in some cases affect them very severely isn't receiving more attention.
At least there are things one can do immediately after the fact to limit nerve damage (applying intratympanic steroids etc), but even these things are often missed and haven't become part of routine procedure yet.
And I'm very curious why Shore's device is still stuck in FDA hell while the (from what I've heard) inferior version, Lenire, passed a long time ago.
30 or so years here, still 5/10 after all these years. I don't let it bother me for the most part, but it'll certainly never be anything but a negative thing.
I'll be honest, this is the first time I'm hearing "just change your attitude towards it" though. It's like the terrible advice someone with depression gets- just be happy!
I mean people with tinnitus can choose to get angry about it or they can... change their attitude toward it.
I have it. I've changed my attitude toward it and made it my friend. I don't really know what else to tell you, but if you want to, the way is open for you. Or you can continue to see it as an aversive thing, and it will continue to be so.
Yeah, I know people don't like that message, but yeah... just accept it.
No amount of wishing it away is going to make it vanish in the same way if I really want to fly I just need to think I am a bird... at least in theory. ;)
It doesn't mean you have to be happy with it but just accept it, bring it out like a photo album of the family. 'Here is my tinnitus, it stays past its welcome but keeps me company.' 'There is my balding, society considered it ugly, I think it is just neat.'. 'Oh the knee that wants to play up every once in a while, yeah that happens, we work with it the best we can.'
Meh. My tinnitus is a result of high-frequency hearing loss. The hearing loss is not noticeable - maybe I can't hear something just below what dogs can hear? - but the tinnitus is noticeable.
I have no idea how it happened - I never used headphones much, I don't work around machines or jet engines, etc. One doctor said it's just wear and tear.
It doesn't bother me though. I figure that nobody has a full stack of bricks when it comes to health, and here's one of the places I'm short. Compared to some of the places where other folks have health problems, this is not a biggie.
There's surgery...
IIRC it's only for a specific, rare variant, though?
There's also that surgery where they sever your auditory nerve and render you deaf. Some have done this in an extreme last-ditch effort to cure their tinnitus. Sadly, it doesn't always work -- many of those who tried became deaf and yet remained stuck with tinnitus.