\n<\/p>\n
One night, I heard a dripping tap. I asked my husband to check all the taps \u2013 upstairs bathroom, downstairs toilet, the kitchen. He assured me there were no dripping taps. He refused to check again. We\u00a0argued. I checked. I desperately wanted to find the source of the noise. Nothing. What was that sound? Where was it coming from? I tried to ignore it. Then I was told.<\/p>\n
My husband, a GP, explained \u2013 calmly, with all the understanding he could muster \u2013 that I had tinnitus, like Lara Williams (A moment that changed me: on the day of my first book deal, a mysterious hum overcame me, 6 August). How did I\u00a0get it? Where had it come from? He\u00a0couldn\u2019t tell me. \u201cIt just comes,\u201d he said. I hated\u00a0him.\u00a0I didn\u2019t sleep at all that night, nor the night after. The noise was unbearable.<\/p>\n
On the third night, I remember standing on the landing, crying. I\u00a0was filled with rage. Then my son, David, came to the rescue. He put his headphones on my head, and a beautiful sound replaced the racket in my ears. It was How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees. Tears still streamed down, but I began to feel a sense of calm. I stopped hearing the awful noise. I listened to the Bee\u00a0Gees, Puccini and Chopin.<\/p>\n
I listened myself to sleep. I taught myself relaxation techniques. But when the noise becomes unbearable, then I need all my techniques \u2013 music, poetry etc \u2013 to calm down and ignore the falling bombs, the dripping tap, the\u00a0loud drums. It\u2019s hard. But I can do it. And I want to tell people who suffer from this terrible condition: accept it. Forget the anger. Don\u2019t ask why. Don\u2019t think you\u2019ve been punished. You haven\u2019t. Just learn to\u00a0cope with it as\u00a0best as you can. I have suffered with tinnitus for nearly 10 years, following an incident of uncontrolled loud music in a badly run venue. The resulting damage ended my musical performance and teaching career, and left me in a state of grief that will be with me until the day I die. While it is true to say that habituation does occur in time, it is no substitute for not damaging one\u2019s hearing in the first place. Even though I am as habituated as I can ever expect to be, the tinnitus still dominates my life and activities. It impairs my sleep, and makes socialising difficult and listening to or making music impossible. I urge gig-goers, venues and musicians to take great care, because to wake up one day and realise that irreparable damage has been done to such a precious part of being human is devastating yet avoidable. I also encourage anyone affected to visit\u00a0the Tinnitus UK website. Why has there been virtually no progress on \u201cfixing\u201d tinnitus? Lara Williams elucidates the desperation we all go through when acute tinnitus sets in. Her \u201cacceptance\u201d of the sensory handicap as the only path to coping with the condition mirrors my experience. However, that doesn\u2019t always work. Other anxieties can derail our blocking. Then we have to build up the resilience all over again. It can be\u00a0an\u00a0exhausting process. Tinnitus is exhausting, painful and isolating. At my first self\u2011help group, a gentle old lady told me she heard it as the angels urging her to carry on. Mine sounded more like a wasp trapped in a tin mug \u2013 but perhaps Lara Williams might find the angels version comforting? I read with empathy Lara Williams\u2019 article describing the onset of tinnitus. Sudden onset in adulthood must be very distressing. In my case it has been lifelong (I\u2019m 76), and I only gradually became aware of it in my youth. She describes hearing something between an electronic hiss and the roar of the ocean; my symptoms are similar. I don\u2019t remember a specific onset, except that in adolescence I once or twice asked if anyone else heard high-pitched sounds from the TV and no one did.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t have access to the kind of professional help Williams consulted, but seemingly came to the same conclusion. It\u2019s there, part of me that isn\u2019t going away; fighting against myself is futile. Letting go of the idea that this is something that shouldn\u2019t be happening works better. Should and shouldn\u2019t have nothing to do with it. It just is. Williams\u2019 analogy to snowfall is beautiful and illuminating. Paying full attention to the moment or engaging fully in activity helps to simply not notice the tinnitus, or at least not as much, depending on the perceived volume at the time. Or maybe, sometimes, it\u2019s just forgetting to hear the tinnitus while listening to the silence. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One night, I heard a dripping tap. I asked my husband to check all the taps \u2013 upstairs bathroom, downstairs toilet, the kitchen. He assured me there were no dripping taps. He refused to check again. We\u00a0argued. I checked. I desperately wanted to find the source of the noise. Nothing. What was that sound? Where<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[8676,452,585,132,988,8675,8357],"class_list":{"0":"post-15082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-deafness","9":"tag-hearing","10":"tag-learning","11":"tag-live","12":"tag-loss","13":"tag-tinnitus","14":"tag-torture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Maria Ursi Amesbury<\/strong>
Bristol<\/em><\/p>\n
Sue Parish<\/strong>
Lancaster<\/em><\/p>\n
Paul Woodin<\/strong>
Hitchin, Hertfordshire<\/em><\/p>\n
Ian Garner<\/strong>
Oxenhope, West Yorkshire<\/em><\/p>\n
Bryan T Davis<\/strong>
Cedar Rapids, Iowa<\/em><\/p>\n