Adventures in Tinnitus

 The date it started

I went for a lovely run with my friends in the morning, and showered, and went to babysit my grandchildren for the day. While I was with the kids, I kept hearing a sound like a telephone bell off in the distance. Eventually, I realized I was hearing that bell only when my grandchildren or I was speaking, and that the noise was actually coming from inside my own head.  

Of course, my first instinctual reaction was that I had a deadly brain tumor. (Good news: I've had this reaction often enough that I could laugh at myself even while I was contemplating it.) Still, even while I knew I was not in dire danger, the bells in my head persisted, and my ear started to feel sorer and sorer.   So -- since my doctor's office was closed -- after I finished up with the kids and a couple of other pre-planned errands, I walked over to Urgent Care.

Urgent Care told me that I didn't have an ear infection (that was my second self-diagnosis), but rather that I had allergies. I'm not sneezing; I don't have itchy eyes; I don't notice my nose running; I've never really had allergies before.  Still, the doctor could see postnasal drip and see that my ear  drums were white in a way that indicated my eustachian tubes were all blocked up. The doctor prescribed Flonase, and said it would take three or four days for the passage to open up again.  I thanked the doc and went home to start my meds regimen. 

The first full week

The ringing in my ears--tinnitus--started in seriousness. Sometimes, especially when people with high voices were speaking, I could still hear the bells, especially in my left ear. After about four or five days I started to worry about how much to worry that it hadn't gone away like the urgent care doc said it would.  Was it a problem that the Flonase hadn't unblocked my ears in four days? Should I see a doctor about this? Is the medication expected to take longer after all, and I should just wait for it to do its work?  

I called back and forth with doctors who were remarkably unsympathetic about the ringing in my ears ("there's nothing we can do about tinnitus"), but did confirm that re-opening my eustachian tubes can take weeks (more than days).  So I decided not to worry.  

Well, deciding not to worry and actually not worrying are two different things.  The ringing in my ears is certainly anxiety provoking.  The quick internet research I did on it suggest that two things help:  one, white noise, and the other, cognitive behavioral therapy ("if you learn not to be bothered by the ringing, then it's not a problem anymore").  The last one seems rather difficult to believe, but it nonetheless gives me hope.

Over the course of this week and the week that followed, the fact that my ear still feels stopped up and sore has become another small bit of hope:  if-and-when my eustachian tubes clear, maybe this ringing will go away.  Maybe I won't have this ringing for the rest of my life.  

Amid this hope, I learn to become wary of quiet rooms.  Walking around outside, being in a room with open windows, walking past a humming microwave oven . . . all these help the ringing to subside, or even disappear.  Sometimes I think I'm cured!  And then I walk into a quiet room and it's like I'm in a pressure tank, and my head is bombarded with whining, screeching mosquitos.  Not only that, but often also, it's like I've been diving deep underwater or flying high in a plane; I can feel the pressure in my ear drum more when my ears are ringing than when I'm in a place with ambient sounds.  The ambient sounds don't so much drown the ringing out; it's rather like they cancel the ringing -- like there's a switch that turns the ringing off and on, and the microwave oven can flip that switch.

During the day, if I'm sitting at my computer, I binge stream YouTube videos that play white noise.  I'm not fond of extra noise (static, or rain, or wind), but it's so, so, so much better than the high-pitched whine that is the alternative.

Also, I try not to stay inside: I try to be outdoors where I get relief from the whine.  Sometimes, even outside, the whine returns, but it's easier to find ways around it there.  Except at some point, I really do want to sit and read the paper, or sit and work on math, and sometimes I need to be indoors, and so it's back to YouTube noise zzzshhhing back at me.  

At night, I go to bed with ears ringing.  I think about mathematics problems; I've been hooked on solving a geometry problem and about finding the best ways to explain the solution, so I force myself to think about a particular problem and, in fact, by concentrating hard enough on that I can distract myself from the ringing enough to fall asleep.  When I wake in the middle of the night, I have to do the same thing all over; it's a chore, but I'm kind of impressed that it works.  It's really, really hard to make myself think about ellipses and tangent lines and LaTeX code when instead I want to obsess over the fact that my head is at war with me and maybe I'll never live in peace and quiet ever again in my life, but making the effort, surprisingly, works.  

The second week

The bells effect seems to have gone away, but the stuffy ears and ringing in my ears is still strong. I decide to become a warrior. The longer this lasts, the more chance there is (I am figuring) that this condition will be with me chronically. I'd had very mild ringing in the ears for a while now, which I'd noticed only when I do something very quiet, like sitting down to meditate.  That was nothing like what I'm experiencing now, but perhaps it's a harbinger of what is to come. If so, I want to be prepared.

I double down, or perhaps triple down, on the trifecta of drugs (Flonase), white noise, and mental gymnastics. 

As for white noise, before this all started, when I wasn't doing something that required a brain power, I would often listen to a Pandora station I'd designed that included singers like Tracy Chapman, Alison Krauss, Etta James, and The Wailin' Jennys. But I can't concentrate on math when they're singing, so I'd turn off the music once I started reading or solving crossword puzzles or writing emails.  This week I decided to go for music with no words: websites about tinnitus say that classical music often helps, so I start a new channel.  I can do math while listening to symphonies. 

My husband gives me a pair of earbuds, because those same websites say that some tinnitus sufferers actually get hearing aids that pipe white noise into their ears for relief, and earbuds seem like a potential test of how that might work.  When the ringing overcomes the music, I add a bit of "Celestial White noise" or "rain noise" for a little while to help reset my head, and then go back to just music.  And for night time, I bite the bullet and have my husband order me a white noise machine (shudder), so I'll have the option of using it.  I don't know if it'll actually work, but I'll have the option of finding out.  

[Update: nopers.  As I'd feared, the white noise machine is the worst of both worlds,

creating an annoying noise (ugh) that doesn't mask the ringing (ugh, ugh).

So we sent it back.]

As for mental gymnastics, I add in a deliberate social component to my life, which I figure is probably good for me anyway.  I know I need social interaction to help keep anxiety at bay, and when I'm talking with other people the ringing isn't as bad, so I give myself social rules: I bop around campus, visiting various colleagues and friends, and I tell myself I must talk to X number of people before I go back to doing math.  When I meet with them, I turn my experience into a grand story:

"Want to hear one of those great ironies of life?  I've started my sabbatical, so for the first time in a long, long time, I get to do what I love most in the world: to go into a quiet room all by myself and read books and think about math!  And now I have this thing that makes being in a quiet room all by myself a minor form of torture from hell . . . "

And when my friends understandably offer sympathy and say how horrible this must be, I can point out the irony and humor, and I say that I'd think this were a funny joke if it wasn't me that is the main character.  Sharing this with friends, and laughing at myself this way helps to put things in perspective.  I'm generally healthy, and I live in a time where I *can* get advice from the web and white noise, too.  Seriously, bringing other people into my world reminds me that this is rotten, but it's not devastating.

Also, I make a doctor's appointment for about two weeks from now -- it's just about time for my annual physical, and also having something on the books ahead of me is reassuring.  (And the fact that I'd already called my doctors about this and they didn't seem to be alarmed at all says, eh, give it two weeks more before I whine at them about whether it's working).  

I don't know how to "train my brain" to ignore the ringing, but I also know that there are lots of noises in the world I pay no attention to, and maybe this weird high buzz can be one of them, if I can't somehow get it to go away by draining the pipes between my ears and nose.  One friend tells me she's had ringing in her ears for years, and by now she's learned to ignore it.  This is both terrifying and comforting.  It gives me more reason to find ways to soldier on.

The third week

I have discovered many of my friends who are highly acquainted with allergy management, who commiserate and offer advice.  Many of them take multiple meds, and based on their regimens, I add a few to my own:  in addition to Flonase, also Claritin and Sudafed.  I don't know if allergy meds will (eventually) help with the ringing, but in my head (so to speak) they're related, because my ear is still stopped up.  The first night I took Sudafed,  I slept like a log -- in fact, I overslept church a bit the next morning.  It feels a bit delicious. 

The ringing sometimes seems not so loud.  I don't know if that's wishful thinking, or if I'm just getting used to it, or what.  It's certainly not louder than before, so that's good at least.  But it's still here.  

I meet more people with tinnitus.  One man from church has had it since the start of Covid.  Another had ringing in his ears for 4 months, and then it went away.  This is yet more terrifying comfort.  Still, I'm managing okay, and I know there are worse things in the world.

To be grateful for: 

1. the internet, which connects me to advice and also gives me distracting noise.  
2. Also (and I know this isn't for everyone, but for me, this is golden): math.  Seriously, this math problem I'm playing with is a lovely distraction from the omnipresent whine/buzz that follows me around.  Plus, the math is pretty, and it feels good to bring something pretty into the world.  
3. And, of course, friends, because when I'm talking to others the combination of distraction and noise is often so powerful that I'm at peace again, which is a wonderful place to be.