Louder on the Inside

A Tune Note I Can’t Get Out of My Head

Here are a few thoughts on my tinnitus:

• The word is generally taken to mean a “ringing in the ears,” although it varies from case to case. For me, it’s usually a single high-pitched note, occasionally punctuated with a clicking sound.
• I prefer the pronunciation with the first syllable accented, even though that contradicts my usual authority, Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1934, my copy is from 1949). The other accepted pronunciation accents the second syllable; I avoid that because it makes it sound like the word ends in -itis, implying an inflammation. This is one of my linguistic quirks, and I stand my ground.
• Sources I’ve consulted all point out that tinnitus is not an ailment, but a symptom, usually of hearing loss resulting from exposure to loud noise. Fair enough. Although I might have played some music too loud in the ’70s (not Led Zeppelin, but Mahler and Richard Strauss), I pin the cause on my happy summer afternoons “experimenting” with fireworks. Ah, the days when $1.29 would get you a gross of bottle rockets and several hours’ occupation. Fond memories.
• Tinnitus is a condition, like headaches, that is difficult to observe externally through empirical means. Therefore, no one is entirely sure whether animals ever suffer migraines or tinnitus. Paging Dr. Dolittle.
• If someone asks me to describe what my condition is like, I tell them to grit their teeth hard so that they can hear a high pitched sound from their jaw muscles. I once heard a radio program where a doctor demonstrated the effect using a tone generator to make extremely high-pitched sounds. The reaction from the show’s host: “Turn it off! Make it stop! Please!”
• A common belief over the years is that tinnitus is the sound of blood vessels near the eardrum. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has a servant girl mention the topic, not realizing that her interlocutor had committed murder the previous day. “It’s the blood.” “Blood! What blood?” “That’s the blood crying in your ears.” I do remember times as a child, sitting in a very quiet room, and hearing the sound in my ears getting louder until some external noise came up.
• In all the years that I taught, one constant foible among many students was a real aversion to silence. Some of them seemed uncomfortable by a lack of noise in a room, almost to the point of panic. Some of these same young people played their music so loud that I could hear it from their earbuds across the room, so perhaps they need not worry about dealing with absolute silence before too long.
• The volume level of my ear noise is fairly constant, though it does increase at times, particularly if my blood pressure is raised. I have noticed that even if I’m in a room where the ambient sound (e.g. music, machinery) is so loud that conversation is almost impossible, I can still hear my single note in the ear, like a fermata from a heavenly soloist.
• Yes, I hear it even in my dreams.
• I have made peace with it. There are certainly worse conditions to deal with (such as migraine headaches, which run rampant in my family, including me). I’ve read of some people whose tinnitus is akin to an endless torture, driving them to suicide in some cases. My luck is much better than that (at least so far). The threat level of my condition is somewhere between “nuisance” and “annoyance,” and as such I can live my life with it. And of course it’s not as bad as, say, missing some fingers, which was another possible outcome of my fireworks escapades.
• And finally,I’m not sure what musical note my tinnitus is, but it is above 8000 Hz, which makes it at least an octave higher than Key 88 on a piano. If ever I wanted an über-nerdy conversation starter, there it is.

#tinnitus

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