Ben Thompson, AuD.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Pure Tinnitus & Hearing Podcast, episode number 18. Today, we are here with Dianne. Dianne has reached out to me. We had a tinnitus consultation. We became friends and we wanted to share Dianne's story to potentially help someone else who's listening or watching.
So Dianne you've had tinnitus for six years. Please tell us what you've learned over the years and a little bit about your story.
Diane Lambert, Health Coach
Yeah, so it's good to talk to you again Ben. Yes, I've had tinnitus for almost six years now. It started 2015 in November, and, you know, I was working kind of a stressful job and it was a job I really loved. I'm a health coach. So I was traveling the country, I was giving presentations, working with a local company here in my hometown but I had crazy hours. I was up late doing screenings. I would be up early, just a lot of inconsistency in my life. Wasn't eating at regular times. Wasn't exercising at regular times. And I remember having a conversation with one of my coworkers saying, you know, this is getting really hard. I'm not 20 anymore. So keeping the schedule is getting a little stressful.
I don't know how long I can keep this up. And I probably had that conversation a couple of different times over the year well, probably between 2014 and 2015, you know, and I would just keep pushing through because I really liked my job. I loved what I did. And then after a six day trip out to Michigan and we were doing a lot of screenings, a lot of presentations, I came home and the next morning I had to get up early again for another screening. And I woke up and I had this sort of muffled feeling in my ear and also this noise, kind of ringing, but it was sort of low level. And I thought, oh, that's kind of odd. I don't ever remember having sort of muffled hearing before but I kind of shook it off.
Then I went to my screening and I was still kind of, you know, aware of it, but I wasn't really bothered by it. But after a couple of days, it wouldn't go away. It was just remaining. And then I started to get concerned. And then after about a week or so of that and just being overworked and overtired, you know, I kind of went from zero to about 60 in terms of anxiousness. I became quite anxious, quite depressed. And to kind of shorten the story a little bit, in about three weeks, I lost about 17 pounds. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't get rid of the noise. It was quite disturbing.
So I had to do something and I went and found help. I went and saw a professional. I went to an ENT, you know, I kind of did the route that probably a lot of your listeners have done or thinking about doing or was told to do, go see an ENT. I saw two of them, you know, put me on steroids, which made me crazy. Had an MRI of my head to make sure it wasn't I think they called it acoustic neuroma, right? They wanted to rule that out and any other physical cause. And finally, I ended up really, I ended up seeing, you know, a psychiatrist and said, I can't live like this, I need to do something. And they recommended some medication for a while which kind of brought my anxiety down but I didn't know any tools at that time. I had no tools. So I found you, thank God.
https://youtu.be/FwaW0XIL62g
Dr. Thompson asked Diane how she managed her tinnitus.
Ben Thompson, AuD.
Let's stop for a second, and bring us back into that state when you're sort of frantic high anxiety looking for help. You are right now, a wellness coach,