I was listening to This American Life over the weekend and one of the stories was by Nubar Alexanian about his tinnitus. It was a great piece and it struck a chord.

I didn’t know I had tinnitus for a long time.

When it happened, it would be sporadic and I always thought it was some kind of high frequency pitch my ears could pick up. It didn’t even occur to me something could be wrong with my hearing.

I caught some kind of a cold when I was in Europe a bunch of years back, mostly it was just a slight sore throat that manifested itself the day before I was supposed to leave.

The flight back had a connection in London and on the way in to land, I couldn’t pop my ears. The pressure just kept building up not matter what I tried. My head felt like a balloon about to burst. I couldn’t even hear the women sitting right next to me who I had been talking to throughout the flight and I could barely hear the steward when he came over after I hit the call button.

Ultimately, I did get my ears to pop although it was more of a literal thing (I think I wound up puncturing my eardrums). When it happened, I heard a sickly squeal as the pressure from my sinuses was released, it sounded like letting the air out of the aforementioned balloon.

I had to see a nurse at the airport, missed my connection, stayed the overnight (taking the subway and wandering around London on a dazed Saturday night). Wound up having bad infections in both my ears and missing a week’s worth of work.

Last year, I got sick again.

I kept trying to take time off to get better and every day the people at the place I was working at had some kind of emergency or another. I wound up in the hospital and less than a week later when I did come back somehow I was expected to spend 24+ hours at work... even though I could barely hear because of the tinnitus, I was staggering around the office like I was drunk (no equilibrium when the infection in your ears is super bad) and I really shouldn’t have been back at work at all.

You try to be responsible and people just try to take more advantage of you.

Anyway, since the last time I got sick (almost a year ago now), the tinnitus has been a fairly constant companion. I keep the TV or the radio on (sometimes both) just to fill up the empty space and keep from focusing on the constant tone. Some days it’s not so bad, others it can almost drown out everything else.

It was good to hear the story and at the very least know I’m not alone. Take a listen.