Tinnitis Information

[James Ellis]

Thanks to Ron Koval for directing us to the Tinnitis Retraining Therapy
article.  I'm posting this on the CAUT list, because it may be of general
interest here.

Here's an account from personal experience.

Last month, Ed Sutton inquired if anyone had experienced hearing one pitch
in one ear, and a different pitch in the other ear.  I answered, "Yes",
referred to it as "diplacusis", and described my experience with it...that
I simply woke up one morning, there it was, and it's never gone away.  

What I found is that diplacusis goes hand in hand with tinnitis.  The
typical tinnitis is high-pitched, ringing sizzing sounds.  However, the
sudden onset of another tinnitis that I had that was associated with the
diplacusis was low-pitched, around 100 to 150 and 400-500 Hz.  It sounded
just like a big electric motor humming and rumbling.  The humming was a
blend of pitches, the higher one being in the 400Hz to 500Hz range, and A4
in one ear sounded like G# in the other ear, and the same offset for
several notes in that range.  Very annouying for a piano tuner.

The local ENT doctor knew exactly what I was dealing with, and sent me to
Vanderbilt in Nashville, but told me not to expect too much.

My first trip to Nashville resulted in a battery of tests that just told me
what I already knew anyway, and the MRI that I had in Oak Ridge did not
show any brain tumor.  On my second trip a week later, I was asked to fill
out a detailed questionnaire that looked like it had been developed by a
psychiatrist.  During the interview that followed, they explained that they
could take me through a series of conditioning sessions to make me less
aware of the tinnitis.  It was as if they were thinking my problem was
psychological, and not physiological.

I informed them that years ago, when I learned how to tune pianos, I
learned how to concentrate on the sounds I was listening for, and mentally
ignore the others.  In other words, what they were about to teach me to do,
I had already learned how to do, and more besides, a long time ago.  That
wasn't my problem.  My problem was that I was hearing A in one ear, and G#
in the other, G in one ear and F# in the other, etc.  At that point, we
both concluded that the program they were offering would be of no use to me.

As I read that article, when I strip away all the medical lingo from it,
what they are doing is the same thing I was being offered at Vanderbilt,
i.e., just conditioning the patients so that the tinnitis they are stuck
with doesn't bother them as much - masking with noise generators, and stuff
like that.  For someone who has panic attacks over his tinnitis, this might
work.  But for a piano tuner who long ago learned how to concentrate on the
sounds he is listening for, and ignore all the others, and who is hearing A
in one ear and G# in the other, this just doesn't cut it.

But, you know what, it has improved a little bit over the past two years, I
have learned to deal with it, compensate for it, and at 75, I can still do
a pretty darned good aural tuning and voicing job.  

I hope this sheds a little more light on that tinnitis article.  Thanks,
Ron, for calling our attention to it.

Jim Ellis