How do people live with an anvil in their heads

Every third person in Europe and America at least once came across a noise in his ears, but about 8 % of the population hears him constantly. Thousands of people suffer from pain daily, lose touch with reality, cannot concentrate and calmly fall asleep. The reasons are different: physiological problems, mental ailments or professional injuries. With the endless “disco” in the head , for example, the drummer of the Metallica group Lars Ulrich. The author of Samizdat talked with people who live with Tinnitus - a constant noise in her head, and found out what it was like to never hear silence.

Nina could not fall asleep and had been lying on the floor in the bathroom for several hours. The silence of the night was drowned out by a crack - in her head it was as if they installed a transformer booth. The girl cried with powerlessness, buried her head in a washing machine-the soft sound of washing and the murmur of the water flowing from under the tap helped to distract a little. A stream of water loudly broke against the walls of the bathroom, the rumble in his head continued to grow. “I was in a state of affect, tried pills, tried to fall asleep in the kitchen, at the buzzing old refrigerator,” the girl recalls. Something fired in her ears, Nina grabbed her head with her hands and pressed her palms to her ears. Monotonous buzzing broke the whistle, the sound intensified.

Nina was 26 years old when a noise appeared. She experienced a difficult period: she could not find a constant job and often nervous that she did not know what she wanted to devote her life. Nina grabbed at small projects and an accidental part -time job, worried about the future, and then a tumor was found in her chest. Doctors insisted on surgery - prolonged treatment could provoke cancer. In order to distract a little before the operation and not to think about severe recovery, Nina went on vacation to the mountains, but on vacation it only became worse: problems with pressure began and her head fell ill for the first time.

Already in Moscow, the doctor prescribed her sedatives and made a massage of the head - the pain did not retreat. Therefore, when after several days the doctors informed Nina the exact date of the operation, she was very happy. On the same day, the girl went to the other end of Moscow to collect pieces of paper and take tests: “I was nervous. I thought how to do everything in order to get the results in time. The squeezed as a lemon came home, with one desire - to go to bed. ”

Putting her head on the pillow, Nina felt a sharp unbearable pain, as if her skull were squeezed with tongs to crack nuts. The pills did not act, it was noisy in my head and buzzing more with every minute. “I lay on the pillow, looked at the ceiling and reassured myself:“ They will operate on me soon - and everything will end, ”Nina recalls. Then she still did not know that the noise with her for a long time.

Noise out of nowhere

In fact, the human body always makes sounds. The heart beats, the lungs let in and release air, the blood flows through the veins and arteries. Usually we don’t hear anything-sounds are disguised as external noises, the brain “ muffles ” them to focus on what is happening around, but sometimes something in the body goes wrong, pathologies happen, and a person seems to dive under water. Thus begins Tinnitus - a constant sensation of sounds without an obvious source of noise. You can hear the ringing, squeak, hum, rustle, buzzing, crackling of the old TV, chirping cicades and grasshoppers, illegible voices of people, and sometimes a mixture of all of the above. The noise can behave differently: to disappear and appear again, to become louder or for a while to calm down, to sound at first only in the right ear, and then tear the skull. Sometimes it almost imperceptibly affects the quality of life of a person, and sometimes turns someone's existence into a real nightmare.

According to the Association of Otorhinolaryngologists, up to 85 % of patients suffering from ears, are faced with hearing loss. Its probability is especially high if it is inactive the first days after the appearance of the symptom.

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In the head of Natalia (the name changed at the request of the heroine), a strange sound appeared in March 2018:

“At first it was just quietly more uniformly hissing, then in one ear the squeak was added, it became louder or quieter. It was as if I were in a room with many TVs, which they turned on, then turned off the sound. Sometimes in the ear for 10-15 seconds a squeak appeared. ”

For Natasha, it was a heavy spring: she found cancer at her cat, it was necessary to take him to chemotherapy, where he had to hold a pet in his arms, who put injections and droppers in his arms. A serious quarrel with a young man was overlapped. Against the background of stress, the girl fell ill with a heavy cold and on the sixth day woke up from hissing in her left ear. “I was scared. The noise was not strong, but he did not subside, ”Natasha recalls. - In the same morning, I went to a paid clinic, where the ENT advised me to spray the spray in my nose and rinse my throat. If I listened to her, now I would live with hearing loss. ”

If a person has noise and after a few hours he did not disappear, first of all, you need to immediately contact an otolaryngologist and make an audiometry - a hearing study. Timely detection of organs damage is the only opportunity to save yourself from irreversible hearing loss.

“My audiogram showed a decrease in hearing on the left side, so they put me in the ENT department of the federal hospital and began to make injections directly into the eardrum-it was terribly painful,” says Natalya. Doctors told her that noise and hearing loss often appear simultaneously and a person has only 72 hours to start hormones and save hearing.

After the results of the audiometry, Natasha was put in the hospital. Doctors did not explain to her what to wait - no one spoke to her at all. She all the time lay in the ward alone with anxious thoughts, without stopping, reading everything that can be found on the Internet at the request of Tinnitus. And I read a lot of terrible: that the hearing will certainly sit, and the noise will increase to such an extent that it cannot be taken out. “I met my 30th birthday in a hospital, all in tears-not so I imagined it,” Natasha recalls.

Not so simple

In pharmacies you can find many drugs that are one way or another able to help in the fight against tinnitus (vitamins, antidepressants, tranquilizers), but there is no medicine that could defeat it. All because Tinnitus is not a disease, but a symptom. It can be a result of diseases that a person is not even guessed about. The cause may be disorders in the endocrine system, osteochondrosis, problems with blood vessels, blood disease, or, for example, chronic fatigue. Noise can also be a result of mental health problems: anxiety disorders, nervous shock, PTSR.

It is difficult to establish the cause of noise, but sometimes a general physical examination with different specialists can help with this. Julia Levina, an expert in the field of diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of disorders of the auditory function is sure: the patient with tinnitus should be treated by the specialist who will reveal the pathology in his field, the key to healing can be in the origin of the symptom. However, sometimes the same patient can have several diseases at once that can cause pathological auditory sensations.

In some cases, even after eliminating the problem, the symptom itself can remain and go into a chronic state, which is sometimes impossible to understand and study, and therefore cure. “There is a theory,” says Levina, “according to which subjective noise is a failure in the process of processing auditory information that can occur at different levels of the auditory system, and all departments of the nervous system are more or less involved in this process. Thus, a vicious circle is launched, emotional memory makes a person hear the noise again. ”

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Operation on her chest did not help Nina cope with Tinnitus. The first months alone with noise became the most difficult, the girl used to live a new life. People encountered with constant noise are always in suspense, lose their sleep, become irritable. From overwork, the brain ceases to work on the full, from this the noise only intensifies. A long stay in this state can undermine the forces of even the most mentally stable.

“The silence drove me crazy,” recalls Nina. - My parents have a cottage far from Moscow. Once I arrived there, and I started a hellish panic attack. ”

I love silence so much, but nowhere can I find it

The cottage - a quiet, secluded corner - was a favorite place of the whole family. Spicy air, nature, quiet and surface around. Nina liked to come to the village and leave alone in the field to feel peace and serenity. At that time, the weekend in the country turned into unbearable torture: in suburban silence, Nina could not distract from noise and ringing in her own head.

At first, Nina tried not to succumb to panic and suffered, but then she stabbed her inside. She was boiling with indignation: “What is it for me for? I love silence so much, but nowhere can I find it. ” Once on the street, Nina sat on the grass and began to swing from side to side, holding her head and sobbing. From crying, the noise only intensified, but she could no longer control her condition. “Mom and dad grabbed me, and for about twenty minutes we sat together right on the ground. I did not understand how to continue to live. It was very difficult to calm down - I don’t remember how it was released. It seems that my parents brought me phenazepam. ” Nina decided that if Tinnitus could not defeat in a year, she would commit suicide.

Why am I?

Soon after the start of the reception of tranquilizers, Nina tried to meet friends, but the communication did not ask: “They did not understand why I was so dull, they thought that I was offended or unhappy, but I just could not concentrate on a conversation, because everything rang wildly,” says Nina. -Over time, friends stopped talking with me, a couple of times they tried to call “hanging out”, not realizing that I was walking with difficulty. I also stopped attempts to contact them. I wanted support - and did not receive it. After a while, I found out that they all thought that I was “burned with idleness” and I no longer want to keep contact. Only my parents and a young man took care of me, although he did not understand how to help me. ”

Nina and her boyfriend slept in different rooms for a long time. In order to fall asleep, the girl spent several hours, and he instantly turned off and began to snore. Previously, Berushi saved her, but with the appearance of a noise, it became impossible to plug ears, otherwise it is like being directly in his buzzing skull. Usually, lying in bed, people will eventually get used to the ticking watch, stop paying attention to someone else's sniffing and falling asleep. With Tinnitus, everything is different.

Snow problems and constant anxiety overtook Natasha. In the hospital, she could not gather her strength and constantly cried. The doctors managed to restore her hearing, but the noise appeared in the right ear. After discharge, the girl changed her hospital and found a good specialist who has regular observations: once every couple of months, Natasha makes an audiometry and takes a course of drugs.

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“Otoneurologists prescribe something that can potentially save me from the symptom. It has not helped yet, but I hope that my noise will not at least become louder, ”Natasha continues. “I have it weak - I only hear him in silence.” Specialists did not establish the causes of noise.

The doctors who worked with Nina did not give the final answer. In the neurosis clinic, the girl talked with a good otolaryngologist. The specialist found out that she does not have hearing loss, but there is damage to the eardrum that could occur during the flight due to the pressure difference. Tinnitus Nina could be caused by osteochondrosis. Osteopaths and manuals literally broke her in an attempt to eliminate the ailment, but in the fight against noise they did not advance a step.

The cause of noise was called stress. “Some doctors claimed that as soon as I stop being nervous, everything would pass. But after a year and a half, I am calmer than the fish, and the head is still noisy, ”the girl explains. - During this time, I gave crazy money for an MRI, tests, massages, acupuncture - all wasted. There was nothing more to treat, but the noise never disappeared. ”

without establishing the reason, the doctors wished the girl just to come to terms

In the end, the doctors spread their hands and, without establishing the reason, wished the girl just to come to terms. Nina had to take care of herself into her own hands.

Once she found that it was helping to distract from the noise in her head that was pleasant for hearing by extraneous sounds. Then I learned about the maskers - relaxing sounds and melodies. At first, the girl had enough ten -hour rain simulators , but later she found out that there are special applications that use anti -stress sounds of the environment.

It turned out that the sounds of maskers are really useful. In 2014, in the Netherlands, the axis completed the study of practical results of therapy under Tinnitus. It turned out that the maximum effect gives a combination of different treatment methods. Experts recommend using TRT (TINNITUS RETRAINING Therapy) - this is a technique for treating ear noise using maskers. The “white noise” generated by Masker is a sound, the spectral components of which are evenly distributed throughout the range of frequencies involved (the most typical example of “white noise” is the sound of falling water). “White noise” is not universal, but is selected individually for each patient. This technique is recommended to be supplemented with psychotherapy, which allows the patient not to focus on the noise of the noise and reduce nervousness.

Fans of Tinnitus

“Suddenly rang, hissed, whistled, grinded in my head or ears? Confused and do not know what to do? " - Walks a series of rhetorical questions " Club of Fans of Tinnitus ."

The club is a forum that collects thousands of messages with tips, discussions and calls for help. This is far from the only place for meetings - on social networks you can find dozens of communities for people who dream to hear the silence again. They seek support, share the names of doctors and in ways to alleviate fate.

“The comrades that I found in a group dedicated to Tinnitus helped me a lot-we share with them experiences, tested methods of treatment, we really became friends with a girl from St. Petersburg,” says Natalya.

For many people, the opportunity to share your problem and learn about someone else's, but similar experience is an important and necessary step that at least a little, but helps to take a breath and throw out emotions.

The story of Sergei Matveenko has been known to participants about the DNY from the online communities for several years. “It all started suddenly, I suddenly began to hear worse, only one ear, an unbearable ring appeared in my head. I remember how I ran to Laura, he advised to go to the hospital. I am very sorry that I did not listen to him and did not lie. He hoped that the ringing would leave, and the hearing would somehow restore it. ”

A day later, the ringing of Sergey moved to the rumble. Real sounds from the world around were heard quieter and quieter, and then completely disappeared. The man went to the hospital: there he was pricked with various drugs that are prescribed for hearing loss, but they did not help. Sergei returned home deaf. A few days later he learned about cochlear implantation - a medical prosthesis, which in some cases compensate for hearing loss. To get the device, it was necessary to undergo a new examination, issue disability and stand in line.

The next two and a half years, Sergey had to live without hearing. I couldn’t read the lips - I had to switch to communication on pieces of paper. SMS messages helped to escape, newspapers replaced the TV, radio and phone.

“A couple of months after surgery, I was connected by an external speech processor. Sounds began to return. But not to the end - I still do not hear music well, and the speech of people is devoid of intonations, ”Sergey shares. The noise in his ears has been going on for more than ten years.

How to live on

Although Natalia was lucky to save his hearing, the risk of shaking still remains. Now the girl is gradually changing her lifestyle:

“Together with the psychotherapist, I begin to gradually move away from antidepressants and antipsychotics - in the near future, my husband and I want a child. Yes, without drugs, anxious thoughts sometimes return, but I drive them away. I would like to at least see how I will feel without sedatives. I am terribly afraid, because it is not known how pregnancy and childbirth will flow, ”Natalya shares her experiences. If during pregnancy the rumor disappears again, the girl will no longer have the opportunity to take hormones: they can harm the fetus. “Sometimes I'm Google-suddenly someone still came up with a cure for Tinnitus, but so far it is not,” Natasha sighs.

Nina has not yet been able to defeat the noise. She recently moved to Petersburg and noticed that in the new room it was too quiet in the evenings, the girl became difficult to fall asleep again. In the morning, to read the news on the phone, it includes light music. “It's a shame: before Tinnitus, I listened to heavy music and played on the drums, now my head constantly split from sharp sounds. Each trip to the rock concert causes me discomfort, after it the noise increases ten times. ”

Nina drinks antidepressants and antipsychotics, from time to time communicates with a psychologist and learns not to focus on the noise in her head. С тех пор как девушка отказалась от лечения, в правом ухе перестало звенеть. Но шум не уходит. «Больше нет проблем в общении с друзьями и другими людьми. Появилась подходящая работа, из-за которой не приходится постоянно нервничать, — делится Нина. — Но мне обещали, что шум начнёт хотя бы немного стихать, а этого не происходит. Я как птица в клетке. Надеюсь, когда-нибудь смогу полностью избавиться от тиннитуса, но на все предыдущие попытки потрачено столько сил, нервов и денег, что больше не хочется к этому возвращаться».

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