Dealing With Tinnitus (or trying to)

Today I want to share a post on what tinnitus is, for those lucky enough to not have to deal with it.

Tinnitus is a audiological and neurological condition, that has multiple triggering causes. It's a sensory reaction in the brain to damage in the ear and to the auditory system, and it is associated with hearing loss.

Causes are age related (mostly those after age 60), TMJ, head or neck trauma and dental issues. A bigger cause is noise induced, either by a single traumatic experience (such as mine was), or loud music, due to damage to the auditory system. Noise induced hearing loss is sometimes unilateral (in one ear), and causes loss of hearing around whatever the frequency of sound was at time of injury (trauma).

Studies are showing that hearing of certain sound frequencies changes how our brain processes sounds. As the brain receives less external stimuli at certain frequencies, it adapts to what is missing and fills in those missing sounds, thereby causing what is known as tinnitus.

Some symptoms of tinnitus are, ringing, humming, buzzing, hissing, sounds of music and a pulsating sound (as in my case, which is super bad today).

There is no cure, as of yet. There is a group (American Tinnitus Association), that has been working on a cure, since 1980.
Despite the uprise in cases of tinnitus, and many devastating effects, it remains the most severely underfunded medical condition to date.

I have the luxury of dealing with tinnitus, and today's outcome is really bad. Anything I attempted to do today, thus far, did not go so well. My patience was tested in trying to keep my sanity under control. Today my ear (left) is pulsating very loudly, and I am struggling to focus on not wanting to break something out of frustration. I already broke my printer, because it would not work right. On attempting to fix said printer, I broke the button control part. Then upon shredding my month of junk mail, I dropped the container, and ended up with a huge mess to clean. At that point, I was a bit concerned about touching anything else, including this laptop. My poor kid was trying to help me, but I just kept quiet, in order to prevent my bursting on him.

Today is just one of those days when I feel like life is out to get me. I even said, f*k my life today! Do any of you deal with tinnitus? If so, how do you keep from cracking? Some days it is so bad, I want to punch my ear or jab it with something, to make the ear stop hearing anything, anymore.

I am in the process of getting help with a hearing aid, since LNI sucks major balls out here, and cross my fingers it will help. I am at my wits end with this (been over a year, but gotten worse past few months).

photos are from pixabay