Music in My Head

I have a piano playing in my ear. Not outside of my ear. No. It is inside of my head. Some days, it is a lovely piano music that plays ever so gently with lovely notes. On other days, it is a buzzing saw rasping through my skull, making me clench my teeth and close my eyes. Still on some days, it is a bad rap song beating its crescendo constantly, and I find myself asking people if I am shouting because I feel like I need to shout to hear over the beats that are pounding in my head. I never know what I am going to get on any given day. It has even woken me up from a deep sound sleep because it’s so loud. Fortunately, that does not happen very often.

Before you write me off as some nutso, who is on her way to the looney bin, realize that I have tinnitus. It is described as: A sound in one ear or both ears, such as buzzing, ringing, or whistling, occurring without an external stimulus and usually caused by a specific condition, such as an ear infection, the use of certain drugs, a blocked auditory tube or canal, or a head injury.

I don’t have a head injury. I don’t take drugs nor do I have an ear infection. The cause of tinnitus is completely unknown. While I never had it while growing up, I first experienced it after giving birth to my twin sons. For most of their first day on earth, I could barely hear anything since the buzzing in my ear was so loud. It did go away.

It came back again sporadically through a couple of years and it would always go away. Then one day, it didn’t. That was also the day I lost the rest of my hearing.

I am sitting here right now, listening to this mixture of a roar and a buzz saw drilling a hole through my left side of my head. It isn’t as bad as it could be as I get some organ notes filtering in there somewhere. Right now, I have this beautiful, melancholy note playing its scale ... it’s so gorgeous. This might come as a surprise, but sometimes, I actually get beautiful music in my ear. I am afraid though that I won’t be able to replicate it on a piano as I am not musical at all. It is very loud as well. It takes up a lot of my waking thoughts. It makes it hard for me to concentrate on lip reading since it takes up so much energy and sound in my head, that I have a hard time focusing on people’s lips. Sometimes, it is much easier to sit at home and bear the sounds in silence.

No one else hears this besides me. It is all in my head. When I say that, people look at me funny and maybe scoots over an inch further away from me. After all, who wants to sit next to that lady who says she can hear musical notes in her head?

 (And she’s deaf. Shhhh.) 

There is no cure. There are suggestions. Take Vitamin B12 and that will work. Done. Take Manganese ... that did help but now I can’t find it anywhere to buy more of. I don’t have a family doctor of this moment to get a scrip for it. Listen to music and that will help tone the tinnitus down. Sure. I’ll do that ... as soon as my cochlear implant processor is fixed or I get a new one.

There is no cure for this. It is an anomaly, that is what it is. It is irregular. It is not normal. It is something outside of normal boundary and scientists are not really that interested in learning more about this, which I think is a shame since more and more people I know talk about having this.

It does interfere with normal hearing and even with a hearing aid. My husband suffers from it and he isn't deaf. He doesn't know how he got it and it does interfere with his every day living. My mom has it but since she has a cochlear implant, she is able to ignore it during the day. It isn't too bad at night when she takes off her processor.

Some days though, I really do get this lovely note going and it is a reminder that even though I can't hear, I can still have music even if no one else hears it.