Writer explains how she lived with tinnitus for 35 years

The bells, the bells . . . As well as a distant pealing, there’s buzzing, a high-pitched hum — and now the sound of sirens.

I put my fingers in my ears, rather unattractively since I’ve just got off the bus, not to shut-out the noise but to listen.

This time the sirens aren’t in my head: there’s a real fire engine somewhere, I decide with a sigh of relief, despite the fact there is still a cacophony playing out in my head.

I try not to think about it. If I do even for a minute, there’s the hum and the ringing, like swimming underwater, my ears full of gravel.

 

The bells, the bells . . . As well as a distant pealing, there’s buzzing, a high-pitched hum — and now the sound of sirens

It’s tinnitus. I’ve had it since I was 25 — almost 35 years of clamour. It’s not a sign of damage to the ear which, in some cases, can be a cause of tinnitus; I’ve never been to overly loud rock concerts or subjected to industrial noise pollution.

I’ve not bashed my skull or dug into my ear canals with foreign objects. It just happened.

There was a programme on television about how it drove people to suicide, and — ding, ding, ding — later that night I woke in terror with a clanging bell in my ear.

I was already primed by TV to think this was a fate I would not be able to bear, something that would madden me and take me to the brink of my endurance.

Maybe it was the power of suggestion that got me listening in the first place. It didn’t matter. It was there, and I was listening. I was deafened by it. Obsessed by it. Frightened by it. I rang a helpline. It didn’t help.

As time passed, the tinnitus didn’t. It remained my one constant. I saw doctors, one of whom gave me the advice to ‘treat it like your little friend’. I looked at him with disbelief. If this was a friend, then who needed enemies?

I later got married and had children, the noise worsening with every pregnancy until, by child number three, I spent the evenings standing on the balcony trying to drown out the noise with the planes overhead flying into Heathrow.

I slept with an alarm clock under my pillow so I could focus on the slow tick, tick, tick, which helped me ignore the hisses and bangs. I wore hearing aids with white noise — they were meant to replace the sounds with something easy to listen to — but I found them to be worse than the tinnitus.

It’s tinnitus. I’ve had it since I was 25 — almost 35 years of clamour

It’s tinnitus. I’ve had it since I was 25 — almost 35 years of clamour

I also had hearing test after hearing test and discovered in my late 20s that I had some hearing loss, affecting higher frequencies.

Now the bells were joined by the sound of 16 people playing out-of-tune recorders. Doctors explained that with a loss of hearing, the brain ‘compensates’ by producing tinnitus noise.

I saw specialists at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (now Action on Hearing Loss), who fitted me with hearing aids and plied me with reading material.

One doctor told me I could control the volume of sound myself because it was subjective, but sadly I couldn’t find the audio button.

I went to an acupuncturist or five. I consulted an Indian guru and Chinese doctors. I drank herbs that smelled like dead dogs and tasted about the same. And still the bells, the bells just kept on ringing.

You get used to it, eventually — in as much as your entire life becomes about the noise, disguising the noise, ignoring the noise, trying to filter it out.

Some things help, others that should have helped, oddly in my case, exacerbated it.

Loud noises made it worse. Music made it worse.

From all that listening I became very sensitive to sound, distressed by loud music or any external, jarring noise, and often preferred just to sit in total silence so I could concentrate on the buzzing.

There was a support group locally, but I couldn’t bring myself to attend — I didn’t want to hear about other people’s noise and since tinnitus can be linked to depression and suicidal thoughts, I was actually afraid to meet others who might be worse than me: I could cope only with my own distress.

It’s not a sign of damage to the ear which, in some cases, can be a cause of tinnitus; I’ve never been to overly loud rock concerts or subjected to industrial noise pollution

It’s not a sign of damage to the ear which, in some cases, can be a cause of tinnitus; I’ve never been to overly loud rock concerts or subjected to industrial noise pollution

Then, just when I grew accustomed to the noise, it would go up a notch or the pitch would alter and I’d have to recalibrate my response totally.

Worse were the sudden surges of sound, truly alarming clanging and fizzing and screaming that every few weeks would, from nowhere, explode in my ear and distress me sufficiently that I even went to A&E once or twice, convinced I had a brain tumour.

Sitting there next to the man bleeding from his ears, I felt his pain but had nothing to show for mine, and — fair enough — they sent me home with only a flea in my ear to add to the other stuff buzzing around in there.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with me.

The other day-to-day noises, the fizzing, the ringing, well, they are the soundtrack of my life now — my companions.

When they shift pitch, I listen carefully and ask myself: ‘Can you live with this?’ and so far the answer is always ‘yes’.

And when the sounds in my head get too loud, I treat them like alarm bells and look at myself to see what’s wrong: what am I doing too much of 

And when the sounds in my head get too loud, I treat them like alarm bells and look at myself to see what’s wrong: what am I doing too much of 

There are so many other beautiful sounds in the world to balance it off. Birdsong, bees buzzing, the purring of a cat, the wind, the rain, the sea, laughter. I make a real effort to surround myself with these happy noises.

And when the sounds in my head get too loud, I treat them like alarm bells and look at myself to see what’s wrong: what am I doing too much of?

Drinking? Alcohol makes it worse, but also makes you care less. Tiredness? Definitely makes it worse, so slow down. Too much coffee? Cut back.

My tinnitus is like a thermometer that takes the temperature of my wellbeing.

As I get older and inevitably deafer, perhaps it will get worse. But all sorts of other things get worse with age and some of those are deeply worrying, but I don’t dwell on them, so neither do I dwell on the tinnitus.

It’s just always there in the background. My not-so-little not-friend. 



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