My ever present friend and other health issues:

A Covid-19 swab at 8 am, an unpleasant experience again. Peter picked me up at 10.40 am and drove me to the north wing of Worthing Hospital. I dropped off the Covid-19 swab to pathology and attended the blood testing clinic. I was see by nurse Jane for a 3rd time. I then went up to Eastbrook Ward for a parking permit valid for Thursday. Back pain today to add to my painful knees. Is this a side effect?  BSC - 4

I have taken a look recently on the iPhone App Store to see if there are any useful tools to restart a distraction program again. Having reduced the irritating high pitched whistle that I constantly have on both sides four years ago though distraction it may work again. Having quietened the tinnitus before only for it to be brought back by my car alarm going off while in it. Being exposed to very loud noise makes my tinnitus increase in volume, so another attempt at distraction seems worth the effort. The first app investigated was Tinnitus Finder by Desyncra for Tinnitus , its free to download. This app took me through a series of pairs of sounds each time asking which sounded most like my own issue. At the end of the process the app reported that the noise I hear is around 4000 hz. Armed with this knowledge I sent in search for an app that would offer a selection of sounds from White Noise to sounds of nature. The Beltone Tinnitus Calmer  offers up to five different sounds ...

It's now 30 months since tinnitus started to make its presence in my life. I know that distraction sounds work up to a point, but constantly listening to white noise generated by my mobile phone is irritating. Particularly as after using the technic for 6 months I had mastered the squeak until that is I was confronted with a very loud noise. That undid all the good work and I lost confidence in the method. I now just ignore the squeak as best I can and hope that it doesn't get worse!

By using white noise generated by an app on my mobile phone I had my tinnitus under control. In fact, there were many days that I wasn't aware of the whistling noise. That is until I was subjected to a very loud noise when my car alarm went off unexpectedly and continued for several minutes. The result was that the tinnitus returned louder than before and the white noise didn't seem to have the beneficial effect that it had previously had. I have recently resumed using white noise as a distraction to try to retrain my brain and overcome the irritating noise. I have had a hearing test appointment with an Audiologist at the Royal Free Hospital in Bath and it confirmed that my hearing is still above the level where aids are prescribed.

Its been a few weeks since I wrote anything here, but since my hearing therapy appointment I have been using the Opticon tinnitus sound app on my mobile phone. Using white noise mostly I have found that my perception of the level of my tinnitus is lowered, a relief. 6 weeks on listening to the distraction noise I am not cured, but may be distraction will reduce how I 'hear' the whistling sound. Time I guess will tell.

This week I had an appointment with a hearing therapist at Melksham Hospital. The appointment lasted around an hour and covered my history, causes of tinnitus and possible treatments. Tinnitus is a symptom and I have not been able to define a cause for its onset and I don't have any significant hearing loss so a mystery. The therapist drew this simple diagram of the ear, the brain and its connections to the auditory cortex. She gave an explanation of how sound is converted into nerve impulses by the cochlea  that extend my understanding learnt in general science in the 1960's. She said that tinnitus may be the result of damage to some of the fine hairs in the cochlea and the brain over compensating for the loss of the frequency. Fascinating. Of course the most interesting part of the appointment was when she talked about treatments. She told me about 3 categories Distraction, Relaxation and stress management. Distraction. I have a smart phone so she suggested that I ...