My Tinnitus

If you ever fly commercial air travel, you may remember being stuck in the back of a three engine 727 Boeing jet, listening to the muffled thrum of the turbines. It’s a particular sound that is hard to forget if you have been exposed to if for long.

I don’t know about anyone else with tinnitus, but that is my sound; that particular thrum. My auditory hell is being stuck on that flight forever.

Tinnitus is subjective for most people who have it. That is, only they can hear the sounds, which are on the average loudness about 7.5 on a scale of 10. In other words, the noise is loud, and pervasive. The sound usually doesn’t come from one side of the head or the other, but is everywhere, and doesn’t change regardless of the position of the head. This leads researchers to conclude that the sound is perhaps generated by some damage to the auditory nerve between the ears and the brainstem.

Causes are attributed to everything from exposure to loud noises to bad diet to phases of the moon. Which means that tinnitus is little understood and not treatable. One person in five can have it in some form.

But it’s the other part of tinnitus I am more familiar with, which is the sounds that it makes in my head. There are several beside that jet engine sound.

One is the sound you get from a ham radio receiver when it is set on 1420 Mhz or 21 centimeters. That is the sound of all the hydrogen in the universe. Again, it is an unforgettable sound, and with an old receiver it varies in pitch and frequency very slightly, giving it an ethereal feeling.

The other, newer sound came right after my heart surgery, where that jet engine sound turned into the sound of a starship engine, where the pitch rose impossibly and the engines turned at millions of RPMs rather than the 25-40,000 rpm of a jet. That starship sound was very pervasive, almost blotting out all other sounds and sensations. At the time, I was awake and aware with a breathing tube down my throat, and my hands tied to the bed rail to prevent me from pulling that damned tube out. So I was thankful for that tinnitus at the time.

Later I experienced the starship engine sound after bouts with chemotherapy. It was interesting that such treatments could affect my tinnitus, which I am assuming to be a neural feedback in my auditory nerve, or even a syndrome within that part of the brain which interprets auditory signals into perceived sound, much like the brain interprets nerve signals from the eyes into perceived sight.

I don’t always have tinnitus however. That particular moment when I am almost falling asleep is when the sounds go away. That is when the brain cuts off outside noises, or your ears turn off. It is a blissful feeling, that quiet, as I drift into slumber and dream in vivid color, and where in my dreams there is no sound at all.